There is no real difference between equality and “equity”

“Equity” talk is really an attempt to alter views about the aims of societal institutions

“Equity” talk has gained much traction in recent years. As is often the case with corporate and pseudo-academic social justice talk, “equity” is thrown around enthusiastically as some kind of new invention designed to replace the old, dusty “equality”, and much fuss is made over how it is going to swiftly resolve all the problems that the now defunct equality has failed to make progress on for decades. What the term itself actually means, however, remains largely obscure. Nevertheless, there’s one thing that activists and advocates of “equity” seem to be sure of: it is not like equality, it is substantially different, and hence all of its supposed miraculous benefits. Particularly, whereas equality means assuming everyone are the same and treating everyone the same, “equity” means something like being much more considerate of every person’s unique traits (as we’ll see below, this is often immediately conflated in “equity” talk with something like addressing everyone’s needs).

Here is a fairly representative example from a discussion of gender “equity” on YouTube:¹

“[E]quality and equity are two very different concepts, and the difference is more than semantic. For example, when we say equality, we’re talking about two things having the same or similar value. So when we treat two people or two groups equally, we are making sure they have or that they are getting the same thing. […] But when we’re talking about equity, equity can be defined as giving both men and women the resources needed to be successful according to their needs, which is very different from equality, which looks at giving everyone the same thing.”

And here is a quote from another video:

“Equity and equality sound alike, but they are different. […]. Equality is treating everyone the same – giving everyone the same resources or opportunities. […]  To achieve equality, we must recognize that every employee has different needs based on different life experiences, circumstances, strengths, backgrounds, abilities, or preferences. Equity recognizes that because everyone is different and has unique circumstances, everyone needs unique resources or support to reach an equal outcome. Equity is about each of us getting what we need to succeed based on where we are and where we want to go.”

Despite the obfuscation tactics that often accompany “equity” talk, its advocates sometimes do explicitly say that what they actually mean is something like “equality of outcome”, or the straightforward (commonly, group-based) redistribution of resources regardless of any practical problems or countervailing considerations.² Sometimes, then, “equity” indeed seems like just a weasel word meant to push this agenda under obscure and confusing terminology. But at other times, proponents of replacing equality with “equity” seem genuinely confused about what equality or equal treatment means in the first place, and the corrections that equity may supposedly bring to the table. To a certain extent, this is not their fault, because what equality actually means, and what the implementation of this value in real-life situations would involve is rarely clearly explored in public debates (and in many academic discussions as well), beyond the general, aspirational appeals to this value.  

When some of the initial confusion settles, however, several important points about the equality/equity debate emerge. First, contrary to the assumptions of “equity” advocates, equal treatment has never really meant “treating everyone exactly the same”. The image that equity advocacy is trying to create, where equality is this inflexible tool that doesn’t fit reality is simply false: it neither accurately represents the nature of this value in itself, nor how people normally understand it. Second, as many philosophers have repeatedly and extensively pointed out for at least the last several decades, equality is a very complex value. At a minimum, it would mean very different things in different societal or institutional contexts, and even when examining very restricted contexts it would sometimes be hard to come up with a single, simple ethical imperative that equality recommends.

This means, at the very least, that what many equity advocates are doing when advertising their shiny new thing is simply ignoring all of this complexity in favor of pushing ahead a very limited view of the considerations and ethical principles that should guide various societal institutions in their decision-making. Sometimes the result is just a confused and implausible view about what implementing “equity” in real-life situations would require; sometimes this leads to rehashing some old controversies and debates that have been previously put forward in terms of “equality”. Many times, however, “equity” talk amounts, in effect, to saying something along these lines: “the multiple, complex considerations and moral dilemmas involved in implementing equality in real-life situations should just be set aside… let’s just ignore all of these problems! instead, we should simply alter our more fundamental views about the role or aims of public and societal institutions.” The change that “equity” is supposed to bring to the table is not a result of some inherent difference between it and equality; it’s a repercussion of this more fundamental suggested change, which is really the main thing that much of the “equity” talk is pushing forward. 

Some clarifications: “equality of treatment” vs. “equality of outcome”, and the types of situations where equality kicks in

Let’s start with some clarifications. I’ll discuss here the debate over what equal treatment vs. “equitable” treatment is. Following the common usage of this term, by “treatment” here I’ll mean a decision or policy that has a significant effect on the lives of people who are subject to it. Normally these types of decisions or policies are made by individuals or institutions that, for varying reasons, are in a position of (restricted and contextual) authority relative to these types of decisions and the people who are affected by them. So, for example, hospitals or doctors make decisions about how to medically treat people, or what medical research programs to pursue; companies or employers make decisions about whom to hire or promote in a workplace setting; and schools or teachers decide which students to devote more attention to, or which curriculum to pursue, and so on. These types of decisions and policies are, then, largely characterized as professional or expertise-based, and governed by the relevant professional standards. But they are also, presumably, governed by various ethical principles (that the broader society largely endorses), and “equality of treatment” is one of these principles.

Of course, countless decisions of that nature are made on a daily basis by people and institutions who are not, in some important sense, politicians or political entities. These are typically not, then, the kind of decisions and policies that are normally considered to fall within the purview of the government, which instead pursues its aims by promulgating general laws, regulations, or policies. Such governmental laws and regulations typically seek to achieve much broader aims and apply to the general population (and not just to people who come into contact with a particular institution, in a particular context); and debates over what their content should be are normally deemed to be governed by considerations and standards that are more political in nature. How the value of equality applies to political decisions of that sort is a separate issue, which typically gives rise to a set of questions different to those arising in the context of medical, employment, or educational decisions made by people who act in their professional capacity.

Relatedly, apart from what “equal treatment” means in limited contexts of largely professional decision-making, there’s a separate issue of whether society, institutions, or people should strive to achieve something like “equal outcomes”, or equality in the distribution of some important goods (be it resources, income, wealth, or opportunities, etc.) across society at large, that is, outside of such limited contexts.³ The two issues, along with the many different types of questions associated with them, are not always kept apart in public debates. Some people indeed conflate the two things, or assume a very tight connection between them—for instance, that general patterns of inequality observed in society must be a result of unfair or unjust unequal treatment somewhere upstream of these “outcomes”.⁴ My own view is that there are basic conceptual questions about how “treatment” and “outcome” are appropriately characterized to begin with which are relevant to such debates, and we can’t even begin to settle the larger ethical and empirical questions about the connection between "equal treatment" and "equal outcomes" without at least trying to get much clearer about these basic conceptual issues (and after we do that, we’ll probably discover that the relationship between the two, even on the conceptual level, is much more complex than initially thought). But for our purposes here, we’ll have to set aside some of the inclarity that commonly accompanies the terms “treatment” and “outcome” in the context of debates about equality, and I’ll try to use clear examples of “treatment” throughout the discussion.

The question we’re interested in is, then, what does endorsing the value of equality entail, when we look at how people treat each other in the context of the particular type of decisions we are concerned with? What would it mean to treat people equally in such contexts?

What is clear about equal treatment, and what is open to a (huge) debate

In beginning to explore this question, two things seem fairly clear.

First, at least in certain circumstances and contexts, there is a duty (both moral and legal) not to wrongfully discriminate against people, that is, not to treat them in a way that is seriously unfair or unjust based on their group identity (say, their race or gender). For instance, it would be wrong to refuse to hire, or refuse to provide medical treatment to people of a certain background or racial identity, or to not allow them into public places, etc. Readers who are attentive to debates that touch on the moral justifications for anti-discrimination duties have probably noticed that even with respect to these particular duties things are not as clear as we think they are, or would like them to be. Contrary to the picture often conveyed to the public, apart from the more obvious cases of wrongful discrimination, there is a lot of legitimate controversy about whether various “treatments” that involve some type of differentiation between people should be considered wrongful discrimination (and attempts to squeeze the more controversial cases into the accepted anti-discrimination framework by trying to claim that they are exactly the same as the obviously wrongful cases are not going to make this legitimate controversy go away). Second, there’s obviously an ethical duty not to treat people as inferiors in some specific sense: for instance, not to be rude to, or humiliate workplace subordinates or service providers (or anyone else, for that matter).

Outside of these reasonably clear negative imperatives—that is, duties to avoid a certain limited set of behaviors—what a positive duty to treat people equally would involve is a wide-open question. We’ll see below that it would quite obviously require attending to different considerations in different contexts: what treating people equally requires in the context of educational decisions differs significantly from employment or health contexts. But at this point, it’s important to see that even if we limit our focus to a very specific set of circumstances or contexts, which are typically governed by limited and well-defined considerations, discussions about what would constitute equal treatment within them may turn out to be hugely complex. Readers should also keep in mind that beyond the importance of equality in these situations, there are other ethically important things; most notably, treating people equally may sometimes reduce the economic efficiency or productivity of an organization, or alter people’s incentives in undesirable ways. But even when ignoring those extra-egalitarian considerations, deciding on the equal treatment question is sometimes going to be a huge task, which involves weighing different and sometimes conflicting considerations.   

This is clearly illustrated by decisions relating to medical treatment. Examining this domain is helpful because, contrary to other contexts (e.g., education or employment), where the considerations governing an institution’s ethical functioning are much more varied (and subject to much more reasonable disagreement), I take it that most people would agree that one principle should be at least very dominant in most medical decisions: people should, by and large, receive medical treatment according to their medical needs, or that appropriately corresponds to their medical needs in some way (I set aside background questions about how medical treatments are financed; for present purposes, let’s assume that we’re deciding on how to treat people whose contribution to financing the medical system is similar, and that the system’s resources are limited). Most people would agree, I suppose, that there’s a limited or non-existent role for facts pertaining, say, to people’s various professional and personal capacities, future potential, merits in performing certain tasks, or how much they contribute to pursuing the aims of the medical organization treating them in determining how they should be treated in medical contexts. Contrary to what is often implied by various proponents of “equity”, that does not mean that everyone will get all their needs satisfied, but it does mean that at least one of the primary governing principles in making medical decisions is attending to patients’ medical needs. So, what would equal treatment with regard to people’s medical needs involve? What does it mean to treat people equally, in the context of medical decisions?

Let’s take an organ transplant as an initial example. Suppose a doctor has to decide which patient will receive an organ donation, and she wants to treat two transplant candidates equally. Would that mean the doctor has to assign the organ to the patient who has a higher chance of having a successful transplantation procedure—that is, take “chances of successful procedure” to be the relevant feature to be treated equally? Or should the doctor assign the organ to the person who is likely to enjoy it for a longer period—that is, take “years of healthy existence secured by organ transplant” as the relevant feature to be treated equally? Should the decision-maker take into consideration how much increase in welfare or overall health the donation is going to give patients, or only what would be the end state of each person’s health?  Let’s now suppose that someone is in a position to decide whether a certain budget will go to medical research A, or to medical research B. Research A, if successful, will lead to a significant improvement to the health prospects of a limited number of people, perhaps raising all of them above a certain threshold of a barely tolerable existence; and its chances of success are estimated to be not that great. Research B, if successful, will lead to a much more moderate improvement to the health prospects of a much larger group of people. It also has higher chances of success, but even if successful, it’s not going to make that much of a difference in patients’ lives. Which option should be picked?  

The health needs of each person affected by those decisions matter equally, but it’s still far from clear which option should be picked in each situation (and why). As readers can easily see, we’re not going to resolve the many deep and important questions arising in such situations here. There is an enormous literature exploring these types of questions in both medical ethics and the more general philosophical literature, and it only gets more enormous when we expand our focus to contexts outside of the fairly limited medical one (I’ll note below some of the major additional complications that other contexts, such as employment and education, typically introduce).

Here is, for instance, Thomas Nagel, one of the twentieth century’s most notable analytic philosophers, whose essay “Equality” illustrates how present-day analytic philosophers approach these types of questions:

“Suppose I have two children, one of which is normal and quite happy, and the other of which suffers from a painful handicap. […] I am about to change jobs. Suppose I must decide between moving to an expensive city where the second child can receive special medical treatment and schooling, but where the family’s standard of living will be lower and the neighborhood will be unpleasant and dangerous for the first child—or else moving to a pleasant semi-rural suburb where the first child, who has a special interest in sports and nature, can have a free and agreeable life. […] To make it a test for the value of equality, I want to suppose that the case has the following feature: the gain to the first child of moving to the suburb is substantially greater than the gain to the second child of moving to the city. After all, the second child will also suffer from the family’s reduced standard of living and the disagreeable environment. And the educational and therapeutic benefits will not make him happy but only less miserable. For the first child, on the other hand, the choice is between a happy life and a disagreeable one. […] If one chose to move to the city, it would be an egalitarian decision. […] An improvement in his [the second child’s] situation is more important than an equal or somewhat greater improvement in the situation of the first child.”⁵

So, is Nagel an egalitarian, or “equitarian”? Is he writing about equality, or “equity”? He definitely seems to raise questions that present-day “equity” proponents claim were ignored when equality ruled the day, but he is doing so under the banner of equality!

The answer is that deciding between the terminologies of “equality” and “equity” is not going to change anything substantive about the way the questions briefly described above should be addressed, or are (probably) going to be addressed in any real attempt to resolve them. This is because the substantive ethical questions arising in such situations are going to remain the same, no matter the terminology that is used to describe them. What is clear, however, is that bringing the “equity” terminology into the picture doesn’t help us make any progress on these questions, and really doesn’t introduce anything new or refreshing to the discussion.

Equality does not mean, and has never meant, “treating everyone the same”. What it means depends on the aims of the relevant institutions, and doesn’t necessarily have much to do with people’s “needs”

Another thing that becomes apparent even when examining the relatively restricted domain of medical treatment is that, again contrary to declarations made by proponents of “equity”, no one has ever really thought that equal treatment means “treating everyone the same”. This too is fairly obvious in this context: if you have a broken leg, you’re not supposed to get the same treatment as a patient with kidney failure. Nevertheless, if both of you receive adequate medical treatment, you are treated equally—that is, “equally” in the moral sense that is relevant here—by the hospital. Similarly, doctors should arguably give equal weight to patients’ prospects of responding well to medical treatment, but that does not mean that all patients are going to be treated the same, because different people have different prognoses.  

When “equal treatment” is used in political discourse, then, it often implies an appeal to an aspirational guiding principle, which is meant to urge people to avoid wrongfully discriminating against people based on their group identity—that is, treating them in a seriously unfair or unjust unequal manner—or, more generally, to avoid taking irrelevant considerations, or irrelevant features of people into account when making the kind of decisions discussed here, in a way that tends to lead to unfair unequal treatment (because then it is likely that people would not receive equal treatment with regard to the considerations or features that are relevant in a particular context). For instance, urging doctors to treat patients equally often implies that they should focus solely on their medical needs, and avoid treating a patient worse relative to what they would have done had the patient belonged to a different group, or, for that matter, had the doctor wasn’t upset because someone stole her parking slot, or had the patient not reminded her of her annoying ex.

But even when used as a formula meant to guide decisions in a more concrete way, what people actually mean by “treating people equally” is giving equal or appropriately similar weight to the considerations and features that are relevant in regard to decisions made within a particular context (or policy being designed, etc.). So, for example, patients in a medical setting should, by and large, receive treatment that gives equal consideration to their medical needs. This, in turn, could involve very different things from one situation to another: from devoting equal attention to figuring out what their needs are, to considering their recovery prospects equally, etc. Also, these considerations and features may change drastically from one domain to another: while in medical contexts decision-makers should presumably give equal weight to people’s medical needs, that obviously would not make sense for decision-makers in the educational system or within employment contexts. In short, treating people equally would mean, in different domains, focusing on very different considerations and features of the people being “treated”.

Ignoring this diversity of considerations and features that are relevant for evaluating what would constitute equal treatment in varying contexts is exactly where another serious problem with “equity” talk comes in. Oftentimes, “equity” advocates contrast the supposedly uniform treatment mandated by equality specifically with something along the lines of giving everyone what they need, or, in other words, with a claim that what we should really be focusing on in making decisions is people’s needs. Here is, again, a representative quote from a presentation of "equity" on YouTube:

“Equality means sameness, and a fact of life is that we are not all the same. […] If we give everyone the same thing, we’re making the assumption that we all have the same needs, and the same thing will work for everyone. […] Should it be that everyone is treated the same, or should everyone get what they need based on their own situation?”

And here is a quote from another “equity” video:

“Equity is not the same as equality. What if the shoe industry designed all shoes to fit only one size? What if it made all shoes equal? That sounds ridiculous, because we’re all different sizes. We don’t try to make everyone fit the same shoe. We design for variability. That’s equity. Each person is provided access to what is needed. To further illustrate this point, consider giving everyone the same box to stand on to look over a fence [Readers are probably familiar with the image usually presented here, of three people of different heights trying to look over a fence]. This is equality. But it doesn’t make any sense to give someone something to stand on if it’s not needed. Instead, we want to provide what is actually needed for each person to have access.”⁶

The problem here is that there are domains and contexts where people’s needs have hitherto been presumed to not be a consideration that decision-makers should be guided by, or, at least, where people’s needs aren’t considered to be a primary or important consideration that should trump other considerations—but “equity” is meant to apply to all of these domains and contexts nevertheless.

Generally, which considerations should guide decision-makers in different domains, and, accordingly, which feature of people should be treated equally in a given context could itself be a fairly complex and controversial question. At first pass, it seems that the considerations and ethical principles that should guide decisions made by employers, for instance, introduce an additional layer of complication (relative to medical decisions) because the people who are subject to employment decisions and policies are not simply passive participants in the institution’s functioning: contrary to what is implied by the language used by “equity” advocates, they are supposed to be treated in a certain way by their employer in exchange for giving something back, say, contribute to the workplace, or further the relevant institution’s aims. Similarly, students are not just “given” education or credentials in the same way that patients are given medical treatment; they are supposed to participate in the learning process, and perhaps contribute in some way to the functioning of educational institutions (at least, say, when it comes to higher education). Hence, unlike the medical context, where how patients are treated should correspond to one prominent feature that they are largely not responsible for (their medical needs), how employees and students are treated should arguably correspond, at least in part, to their own choices and decisions, and to some personal characteristics that are at least partially under their control (e.g., their credentials and work experience), along with other personal features that are not under people’s direct control but are nevertheless relevant to decision-making in such contexts (e.g., people’s talents or professional potential). This makes the considerations and features that are relevant to decision-making in the employment and educational domains considerably more diverse and difficult to evaluate.

Further, it is often far from clear what are, and what should be, the aims of societal institutions and systems, and so it isn’t clear what are the considerations that are supposed to guide their ethical functioning, and, in turn, what should be considered “equal treatment” by such institutions. Moreover, it is often the case that institutions have more than one primary aim; accordingly, evaluating whether they treat people equally in light of those aims may involve balancing conflicting considerations. Institutions of higher education are perhaps the most obvious example in that regard: their aims may include anything from training future professionals in substantially different fields (from airspace engineers to musicians), providing a forum for open deliberation about matters important for the broader public, producing valid scientific research in a variety of fields, and, at least in some countries, preparing students for future careers in politics and policymaking. What it would mean for institutions with such diverse, and sometimes conflicting aims to treat people equally in their decision-making processes and various day-to-day practices is inevitably going to be a complex question, and a variety of different legitimate positions can be defended here (as is the case with regard to what would “diversity” or “inclusion” properly mean here). Also, treating students or researchers equally in one regard in such contexts—say, with regard to their merits in conducting cutting-edge research in physics—is almost inevitably going to conflict, at some points, with treating them equally with respect to another important aim of such institutions—say, in evaluating how much their perspective can contribute to the diversity of opinions in debates about public policy, or to the representation of various populations in such debates.

What “equity” talk often does at this point is simply ignore the multiplicity and variety of these relevant aims and considerations and the possible conflicts between them (and sometimes collapse all of them into general talk about certain group identities). Again, despite its advertisement as a more nuanced and sensitive form of equality, “equity” talk commonly simply zooms in on a very limited set of considerations, presupposing, or implicitly asserting, that these are the only relevant considerations that should govern the ethical functioning of various institutions, and, accordingly, that whether or not these institutions treat people “equitably” should be judged solely based on an appeal to such considerations. This is especially evident with the repeated emphasis on evaluating institutions based on whether they meet people’s needs—which does not only ignore the complexity just described, but introduces a completely new consideration into our evaluation of the functioning of certain institutions, while at the same time lending it a very dominant role in such evaluation.

Thus, while most people would probably agree that within reason, employers should do what they can to meet their employees’ various workplace-related needs (for instance, be flexible with vacation time or working from home), what “equity” advocates seem to be advancing is a much stronger claim: that it’s the primary role of places of employment and employers to satisfy their employee’s needs, or to provide employees with their needs (in a way that seems similar to the claim that it is hospitals’ role to treat people adequately based on their medical needs, or that it is the role of the welfare system to provide people with their basic needs). Few people would endorse that claim, and, in any case, despite advertising itself as a “soft” substitute for equality in the workplace, “equity” here presents, in effect, both a very demanding and controversial standard for workplaces to adopt (and that’s before we even begin to consider its various practical implications).  

“Equity” talk really advocates for a complete overhaul of accepted standards for evaluating institutions’ functioning

In other words, introducing “equity” into the discussion here does not have much to do with what would constitute either “equal” or “equitable” treatment in workplace environments. Rather, the banner of “equity” and its supposed difference from “equality” in such arguments is used, in effect, to introduce very strong and controversial claims about the roles or aims of societal institutions. In the quotes mentioned above, for instance, the real claim is that the aim of the workplace should be altered altogether: from promoting the business aims of an organization (for instance), to satisfying or providing for employees’ needs. Accordingly, workplace decisions should no longer be made based primarily on, say, employees’ contribution to the workplace, or their merits relative to furthering a company’s business aims, but based on how well they satisfy employees’ needs. That is, in many cases “equity” simply suggests a complete overhaul of widely accepted views about the societal role of places of employment; what would constitute “equal treatment” or “equitable treatment” under such a new ethical system is, to a large extent, just a derivation of this more fundamental change, not the main point of “equity” arguments.  

It’s okay to argue, of course, that what society needs is a complete overhaul of the way we understand the aims of public and societal institutions and the role of various decision-makers. But one should not introduce such a radical claim under the guise of making a few ostensibly harmless tweaks and improvements on supposedly outdated ethical concepts. In any event, understanding the complexity of the value of equality, and the complexity of many contexts that give rise to questions about its appropriate implementation, is necessary for making real progress in such debates, and confronting bad and potentially destructive arguments.

References

Anderson, Elizabeth S. "What is the Point of Equality?." Ethics 109, no. 2 (1999): 287-337.

Dunn, Michael and R. A. Hope, “Chapter 7: Establishing Fair Procedure”. In Medical Ethics: A Very Short Introduction, 78-92 (Oxford University Press, 2018).

Kamm, Frances Myrna. "Equal treatment and equal chances." Philosophy & Public Affairs (1985): 177-194.

Loury, Glenn and John McWhorter. “The Moral Insult of Racial Equity”. Conversation on The Glenn Show YouTube Channel.

Medina, Paloma. “Lets stop talking about diversity and start working towards equity”. YouTube video on TEDxTalks channel.

Nagel, Thomas. “Equality.” In Mortal Questions, 106–27 (Cambridge University Press, 2012). doi:10.1017/CBO9781107341050.010.

Nagel, Thomas. "Equal treatment and compensatory discrimination." Philosophy & Public Affairs (1973): 348-363.

Percil, Karlyn. “Why gender equality is not the same as gender equity”. Interview on Cityline YouTube Channel.

Sen, Amartya. “Equality of What?”. The Tanner Lecture on Human Values, 197-220 (1980).

“Workplace Equity and Equality ”. Conversation on The Brimful Life YouTube Channel.

“Equality vs. Equity”. Synergy Consulting YouTube Channel.

“Equality, Equity, and Social Justice”. SIPDC Trainer YouTube Channel.

1. It is really not my intention here to pick on any presenter or equity advocate in particular, but to give a general overview of the arguments often used in this context. Indeed, many equity advocates (professional and others) use similar, and sometimes identical, talking points.

2. Here are some quotes from the videos referenced below: “equity is promoting justice […] within the […] distribution of resources by institutions or systems”; “[equity is] stepping aside to make room, trading some of those advantages that you may have gotten systemically to [reach gender parity in income]”; “Equity recognizes that because everyone is different and has unique circumstances, everyone needs unique resources or support to reach an equal outcome […] Equity is true equality”; “the goal is equity. […] it’s time that we make this goal measurable and time-bound. What this looks like on the ground is that instead of saying that you care about hiring for diversity, say that you’ll achieve racial and gender equity in our hiring procedures in 3 years. […] It also means that instead of saying things like ‘we value diversity in our employees’ instead you influence your leaders to commit to increasing racial and gender representation on your executive team by 50% in 3 years. You can say that!.”

3. The latter is the focus of much of contemporary philosophical-egalitarian literature. For an overview see Elizabeth S. Anderson, "What is the Point of Equality?."

4. I put “outcomes” in scare quotes here because often it isn’t even clear that certain things commonly referred to as “outcomes” in the context of such debates are properly characterized as outcomes of anything (e.g., identifiable decisions or choices).

5. Nagel, “Equality”, pp. 123-124.

6. There are larger thought undercurrents underlying this identification of equality or equity with “access”, and the implied analogy between equality of treatment and providing access to people with disabilities, but I’ll need a separate essay to fully address them.