The concept of equality of opportunity is rooted in the Rawlsian philosophical tradition, whereby people are expected to construct a societ...
The concept of equality of opportunity is rooted in the Rawlsian philosophical tradition, whereby people are expected to construct a society in a way that they would be happy for their position in society to be determined by a random draw. He argued that social positions should be formally open to all and that each person should have a fair chance of attaining them.
Over the years, with the development of the academic literature within inequality studies, there exist multiple interpretations of how “inequality of opportunity” may arise because of factors or circumstances that are beyond an individual’s control.
These feature conversations around the concerns related to “accessibility” and “availability” of basic resources (as American philosopher Ronald Dworkin argued), or primary (public) goods such as basic liberties and rights-including access to political and other offices (from a Rawlsian lens, 1971), in addition to public goods, where the quality of education or access to secured labour market opportunities from an intersectional lens of gender, family background, ethnicity, place of birth etc, all these becoming instrumental for allowing one to lead a better quality of life.
Measuring inequality
With the aim of understanding inequality from the lens of such “means” or “opportunities” rather than merely focusing on “outcomes” or “ends”,...
