Move over Equality, Equity is the new kid in town: Here’s what it means

Over the past few years, corporate HR departments and public bodies have quietly been wielding their Tipp-Ex in a bulk deletion of the letters ‘a’ and ‘l’. ‘Equality’ has been changed to ‘equity’ in a mass rebranding of EDI (Equity, Diversity and Inclusion) departments and initiatives.

Or maybe it wasn’t quiet: perhaps in your experience it was heralded with great fanfare. Either way, this deletion represents a significant extension of the EDI mission, now almost synonymous with the one term, Equity. So what is Equity, what does this change imply, and how should we think Christianly about these matters?

1. Equity in our current moment

One image commonly used to explain the difference between equity and equality shows three people standing behind a fence watching a baseball game. In the first version of the picture, all three stand on the boxes of the same size. But because the three people are of different height, only two of them can see. This is equality – each being given the same. But in a second picture alongside the first, the three individuals are given different sized boxes (the highest pile of boxes for the smallest person), such that all of them can see over the fence. This is equity – each being given what they need given their unique situation to allow them to achieve the end goal of seeing over the fence at the same height.