People mistake equality for equity, thinking that, by giving everyone equal resources, we are on a level playing field. The fact is, though, that without equity, equality cannot exist.
Equality essentially means providing everyone with the same amount of resources regardless of whether everyone needs them. In other words, each person receives an equal share of resources despite what they already have, or don’t have.
Equity, on the other hand, means distributing resources based on what each person needs in order to adequately level the playing field.
An example…
You visit two schools to give students reading material on how to set up a business. The first school is a state school in a working-class town, the second is a private school in a predominantly middle-class area. Because the second school is fee-paying, it can be assumed that the students will have parents who are relatively ‘well off’, for they can afford to pay for their schooling when they could’ve received it for free, as the students in the state school did.
You give the students in the two schools identical reading material on how to set up a business, assuming that they must therefore now have an equal opportunity to become an entrepreneur. The fact is, however, that by virtue of being from a fee-paying school, the students from the private school will have significantly better chances of succeeding than the students in the state school. This is because they will be more likely to have the funding needed and the support needed to make it happen. In contrast, the students from the state school most likely will not have the funding needed to set up a business. They might have the knowledge that the reading material has equipped them with, but without having the money to do anything with that knowledge, they don’t have an equal opportunity to succeed…
Equality can only exist where equity exists.
We must remove the fence so that we can all see clearly.
Portfolio of Hope 