Political Science 1020E Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Gender Pay Gap, Gender Equality
8 Dec 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Equality is a more controversial value than justice or liberty. Some claim that equality expresses envy, promotes a culture of dependency, and overrides individual responsibility. Others claim that equality is incompatible with our commitment to (cid:498)individualism . Equality is a comparative concept, but comparisons are relatively unimportant. What matters is (i) sufficiency, or (ii), meeting needs, or (iii) concern for the least advantaged. But you can be (cid:498)against equality(cid:499) while being (cid:498)for redistributive taxation(cid:499). We are unequal in many ways: intelligence, social and family background, sex, race, age, and religion. Almost everyone believes in equality in some sense. All citizens should be treated as equals; everyone is entitled to equal concern and respect. But there is disagreement about what counts as treating people as equals. Equality as a distributive ideal: focus on who has how much. Treatment as an equal: ensuring equal citizenship status for all. Relational equality: people should relate to each other as equals.
