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.

This simple example appeals to our sense of fairness. The equal small boxes really do disadvantage the smaller person. It seems fair to give them a bigger box, or they fail to get any benefit from the box at all. And equity, in most dictionaries, means something like ‘fairness’.

However, equity as it is being used in our current cultural moment (which I’ll refer to as Equity) relates to rather more complex matters. The different heights of the people in the picture translate, in the commentary of the EDI department, into the social disadvantages suffered by minority groups. Women, LGBTQ+ individuals, people of colour: all (according to this narrative) have suffered from the scales being weighed against them. People in more than one such category (at the intersection) suffer even greater disadvantage, hence the additional need for awareness of this intersectionality. Equity, or fairness, requires therefore that the scales are rebalanced by the redirection of resources towards those starting further back. Equality is not enough for true justice.

This philosophy can be applied to many areas of life, but it is particularly being felt in education. (As this is where I’ve encountered it, my examples are drawn from this area.) According to the principle of Equity, schools and colleges should actively devote more of their resources to those deemed to be starting at a disadvantage. Wherever this thinking reigns, the focus shifts towards outcomes rather than inputs and (ironically) processes and categories rather than individuals. If a given disadvantaged group is not achieving parallel outcomes to other groups, more resources (and, usually, new techniques and initiatives) should be devoted to them. It is no concern if this happens at the expense of others; they had a head start after all, and holding them back also serves the goal of levelling the end result.

2. Some key problems with Equity

Because this modern brand of Equity appeals to notions of fairness and justice, which have clear Biblical resonance, it can be difficult for us to articulate any concerns about it, even if we have nagging worries about where the bandwagon is rolling. But there are significant issues not far beneath the surface.

At root, the issues stem from that wide gulf between the simple image of giving a person a box to see over a fence, and identifying the multiple factors that lie behind the life history of a human being and what they end up achieving (especially as measured by crude metrics, like gross salary). Much of the Equity narrative seems to deny to individuals the possibility that they might have an impact on their own future. Personal agency is eclipsed by background factors. In reality, every teacher (for example) has experienced privileged pupils who squandered their position, disadvantaged ones who triumphed over their circumstances, and all shades in between. Focus on equal outcomes by statistic ignores the contribution of the human will. It makes it impossible to praise the successful or chide the failure, because everything is reduced to a mechanical matter of inputs and outputs.

There is also a lack of reality about contemporary Equity talk. If a teacher devotes a disproportionate majority of her time to the most disadvantaged child in the class, the attainment of the whole will suffer. Wise teachers have always balanced the needs of the individual and the whole, trying to make up the difference for the disadvantaged but not in isolation. But on the results dashboard all that shows is the results of socioeconomic group A in glaring red. In reality, teachers today are working with a greater percentage of children starting school with significant disadvantages owing to increasing family breakdown. But they are required to increase overall standards and ensure that the disadvantaged groups perform the same as all the others.

Furthermore, the categories of the intersectionality toolbox tend to involve tendentious historical constructions with even more tenuous application to the world of today. For example, should we consider it a matter of injustice if lesbian couples are not given free NHS access to IVF treatment in the same way as an infertile married couple (recently described by the BBC as a ‘gay-tax’)? Equity might suggest that lesbian couples are disadvantaged by nature and we should compensate by offering IVF preferentially to them, to reach the end goal of an Equitable outcome (children for all!).

The ideal future held out by the modern version of Equity seems to be one in which any individual has unlimited potential to remake themselves so as to be able to achieve anything, on totally equal grounds with all others. But if true equality of outcome is desired then anyone, including me, should be able to achieve 100m Olympic gold – which would require a serious amount of remaking of my physique (not to mention somewhat undermining the idea of competition)! The only alternative is to allow that at least some differences in our initial conditions and circumstances (like my inept running) that lead to different outcomes are not evils to be eradicated. But how do we decide what is a part of my identity and what an imposition? How can we determine what is a true inequity? By what standard are we supposed to judge?

3. Responding Christianly

If we get our thinking straight, Christians have the potential to speak with real clarity to these issues. We know why equity holds universal appeal: because human beings made in the image of God have the moral law written on our hearts from creation (Rom. 2:14-15). We know why visions of equity differ widely: because that law is severely, though never completely, suppressed by humans since the Fall (Rom.1:28-32). We know why we can’t treat human beings as mere inputs and outcomes: because God has given to us a rational nature with agency and responsibility (Mic.6:8). We know why the inequities of the world at the moment are thoroughly embedded and ineradicable by mere human effort: because they stem from our sinful condition from which we cannot free ourselves (Eph.2:1). We know why there is a deep yearning for a better future: because God has set eternity in our hearts.

At each of these points, we can appeal to some degree to the shape of reality itself. The transgender movement has encountered significant backlash because nature cannot be infinitely repressed; at some point reality pushes back enough that even in a partially sighted state people see it. So, in the many scenarios in which quoting the Bible might not be the best first move (though surely we want to get there eventually!), we can point out features of reality that people do recognise. We all assume that people have genuine agency: we praise good behaviour and condemn wrong. No one treats a human being as purely the mechanical result of initial conditions, even though we know how important a person’s background is. Similarly, when it’s pointed out, people do recognise that progress seems illusive given the record of history. And the whole quest for Equity rests upon a genuinely shared conviction (from where?) that it is always and everywhere morally right for human beings to be enabled to flourish and not be oppressed.

But more, we have a great opportunity to show that only a Christian vision of reality can give us the clear-sighted vision of reality, and objective moral standard, that the impulse behind Equity talk requires. To seek fairness and justice is right. But the quest needs a guide to reality and a standard by which to measure, in order to judge what is wrong and decide what justice is. Scripture gives us both these things, because it speaks to the life of nations as well as individuals. It gives a distillation of the moral law in the Ten Commandments that has proven itself over centuries to work as a basis for society. It also provides spectacles to correct our view of reality and allow us to make moral judgments on complex realities. This is not simple – it often requires careful application of Scripture beyond the scenarios explicitly contained within the Bible itself. But when used wisely, Scripture enables us to offer a basis upon which to do the work of ‘doing justly’ (Mic. 6:8) and seeking truly equitable treatment of individuals and fairness in society.

We also have the perspective that allows us to be calm and realistic, though persistent, in that task. In Scripture, equity is something that is most often ascribed to God Himself: ‘He rules the world in righteousness and judges the peoples with equity’ (Ps.9:8). Only God’s justice is sufficient to meet the challenge of ruling fairly our world of gloriously complex human beings and societies. Future justice rests not on our own ability to remake the world, but on God’s promise to do so through Christ.

As Christians, we should speak to this area. My advice is to read enough and think enough to have something to say. Then decide that in private conversation, and in meetings which deal with Equity, you’ll try to contribute. What we say may align with the grain of the conversation (for, as we’ve seen, even the modern brand of Equity is not totally wrong). Or it may cut against it. But we’ll be speaking in tune with reality and so acting for the common good in each of those situations. We’ll also be commending the gospel for those who have ears to hear.