Equity is a word we often hear these days. It refers to fairness and justice. As a child, I was trained to think that things were fair if everyone got the same. Early on in life, we learn it is important to treat people equally. Sometimes, however, it’s necessary to distinguish equity from equality. Whereas equality generally means providing the same to all, equity means recognising that we do not all start at the same place and therefore have different needs. Equity is focused on ensuring that people have equal outcomes, even if they need different inputs.
When working towards equity, we need to hold onto our critical awareness so we can see the obstacles that block our progress. There are historical, political, economic, and cultural obstacles in society. While equality and equity are both grounded in the same concept of fairness, one concept sees all of us as the same and allegedly is value-neutral, whereas the other concept acknowledges difference. Equity recognises the unique lived experience of each individual with regard to their historical, political, and economic context.
So, if we want equitable outcomes, we must begin by admitting that we are not all the same and that different obstacles and barriers may prevent us from success. A third element of this discussion is a variation of the concept of equality that concedes that individuals within the same category should be treated the same but also recognizes that there may be differences across categories.The South African constitution is based on this type of equality, as it seeks to right decades of apartheid through differential treatment for different groups within its population.
This difference in perspective leads to different kinds of questions, asking How might we give people what they need to thrive rather than? How might we give everyone the same tools? For example, instead of designing and creating programs about distributing textbooks or computers to all students, someone in education seeking to ensure the opportunity for equal outcomes for all students might create programs that offer more face-to-face tutoring rather than just distributing textbooks. Some students may need different types of support to thrive.
Here’s another example. My friend is looking forward to retirement in the United Kingdom, where she is a citizen. In some parts of the country, the life expectancy is in the eighties and as high as the nineties. However, life expectancy in her part of the country is lower than the retirement age of sixty six. She is sixty-one and worries that she won’t have equitable access to a post-retirement life and pension simply because of where she was born and has lived her life.
An equitable approach to retirement could mean that the retirement age would be adjusted so that people from the working class and people in poor health, with prison records, and from other sections of the population with considerably lower life expectancies would be able to receive a pension for a reasonable length of time.
Another approach to this problem would require understanding about what is causing the difference in life spans between the neighbourhoods with high life expectancy and those with low life expectancy, then working on programs to increase the life expectancy of the latter group.
My friend put it this way:
That’s not actually any version of equality. What I want is equity, where people actually have a chance to live lives and get a pension for a reasonable amount of time. In many communities, people never make it to that age. People who’ve been in prison, for example, tend to die in their fifties. They’re not going to make it to pension age when they get out.
To better understand gaps, inequity, and people’s needs, to be a better designer, we have to learn more about their journeys, struggles, and joys. We need to find out what makes them tick, what will make them thrive. To do this, we need lots of empathy for the stakeholders, our teammates, and ourselves.
To transform society and create change, we sometimes need to treat people differently. We sometimes need to use fair discrimination, whereby we give preferential treatment to the groups that need more support to be able to thrive, making up for years of systemic injustice. We do this, for example, through affirmative action laws, intentional allocation of resources to underserved communities, and doing businesses with minority business owners. In seeking to create equity, we have to be discriminatory and reallocate resources to those who did not traditionally have access. By paying attention to gaps across differences, we will eventually achieve a level of sameness that is better for everyone. Achieving equity requires recognition that because some people have been denied access and benefits, they deserve greater accommodations in order to achieve equity and both bold goals and bold steps to reach them.
Achieving equity requires recognizing that some people, having been denied access and benefits, deserve greater accommodations, as well as bold goals and steps to reach equity.