Social and Gender Equality Ideals and Theories Essay

Introduction

It may not be possible to fully comprehend the ideals of equality without undertaking a critical examination of the term inequality. Although equality has been a controversial subject among several thinkers, we may not refute the fact that it is one of the enlightenment ideals that the world has ever experienced. For instance, the Chinese feminism that began as early as the 17th century can be categorized as one of the robust attempts to fight for equal rights between men and women in Asia.

On the same note, the aristocratic ideal was largely propagated by Friedrich Nietzsche. He was a renowned German philosopher. He did not support ideals such as democracy and equality in the human race. According to Friedrich, there is no need of elevating the selfish desires of the human race in the pretext of democracy or hot pursuit for gender equality.

Main body

As much as the debate on equality continues to rage on, we can be fully assured that merit and achievements should be given more emphasis toward improving the standard of human life. As a matter of fact, there are myriads of cases when equality cannot be functional at all. For instance, nations that pursue affirmative action for the female gender have found it cumbersome to reach the desired targets. In particular, democratic states can hardly attain the elusive dream of equality since political leaders are elected on the basis of popular votes. Perhaps, the best approach that human rights activists can use is to empower both genders through education. Individuals who attain academic and professional qualifications in life are highly likely to achieve a lot during their lifespan.

The redistributive conception of social justice and the notion of liberal rights were reconciled by Rawl way back in 1971 via the theory of justice. Through this reconciliation, he managed to formulate his unique interpretation of equality. He concluded that equality can hardly exist as an ideology. This leads us to one important point of consideration, namely equity. The latter terminology can best be used to refer to the human desire for fairness.

In fact, the most cherished things that human nature can achieve are fairness for all races, ethnic groups, and even gender. In addition, when addressing the concept of liberal rights, it is not justified to overlook the role played by theories of social justice especially through constitutional documents that have been adopted by various states. It is still interesting to mention that human nature can never be satisfied. There is always a vacuum for needs and wants that can hardly be filled. One of the dominant theories in the economics of consumption states that human needs can never be satisfied since they are scarce.

Conclusion

The conception of the term ‘equality’ has been widely addressed by the equality of outcome. The slight differences that exist in the equality of outcome cannot weaken the entire concept, especially when exploring the extremes of equality and inequality. In most instances, the aspect of equality has been approached from a biased point of view depending on the skewed interests of the individual theorists.

However, the equality of outcome tends to be comprehensive enough in this case. Most of the ancient and contemporary theories on equality have vastly inclined towards independent studies and therefore do not consider the input of each other. It is unfortunate that inequality has been legitimized by certain theoretical perspectives. Needless to say, the emergence of civil society movements or pressure groups has invigorated both the equality and inequality discourses.