Equality versus Equity
By Valérie Mallet.
What is there to understand?
Equal is written as the sign of two parallel bars stretching next to each other and that will never be able to cross each other. A very principle, equalities which exist side by side, brush against each other but can not meet again, therefore find their common sense.
Equity on the other hand weights, it is in the movement and in the balance. More than anything, it is a matter of equilibrium. What is the heaviest?, one asks itself as a child: one kilo of feather or one kilo of lead ... time to think about. These are equal in the measure but are not equitable in their foundation. To this ambiguity one can undoubtedly add the term of parity ... which induces the idea of peer, a question of association, of collaboration and not of comparison which seems more exact, just because it makes equivalences cohabit according to the quality of their nature.
Man looks at equality quantitatively, while equity is a qualitative value and therefore relative. The most for one is not the same, perhaps the least for the other. Beyond the accounts is it reasonable to calculate, to put measures to the infinite potential of man.
Equality is a cannon fodder, the territory of all turf wars, whether internal, personal and external with others. I would even say that equality goes against the freedom to choose oneself while equity will give hand to fraternity. Hence the schizophrenic values of the Republic. They are contradictory, cannot coexist, one is a mathematical demonstration with the absurd geometric variable (the //) while the other is a function, a vector of exchange, a kaleidoscope that mixes the best of each other.
Equality ... calls for the legal, the unity of weights and measures, the standard meter, the one that formats and calibrates, creates the uniformity of the race: the mold.
Equity, on the other hand, has its upheavals and its surprises, those that the nature of everyone has orchestrated to maintain the balance, the order of the creation in the respect of particularities and the culture of singularities.
The equity only is capable of maintaining the scales in the individual truth. There is no greater or lesser equity, it is absolute value, while equality concedes, parameters, arbitrates its values.
Equity attaches itself to the singularity and multiplies, equality attaches itself to the norm and adds on. The assessment is easy to make: 10 + 10 = 20; 10 X 10 = 100… 100 + 100 = 200; 100X100 = 10,000 The values of the equity are therefore exponential and you have not yet taken the measure of it. It is time to assess and leave the grid of accounts to reconnect with the fields of all your possibilities.
Equality is a right, equity is a duty, yet the scale of the just is not the justice. Are we equal before birth and death? To be equal to the other, to come close to their ankle ... Equality is a fact, an arithmetic fact.
Equity is an action, an ethical construction. The idea of equality is a utopia that locks you up, equity is a value of freedom to cultivate in order to chart the path of the emerging world.