Can feminism be reduced to equality of opportunity? What about real equality? When will we see that, and how will we know it?.
What is "real equality", as opposed to equality of opportunity? If you want more than equality of opportunity, the only thing that comes to my mind is equality of outcome. Have we not, in the last few decades, moved beyond demanding equality of outcome?.
Far from having moved beyond the demand for equality of outcome, I suggest that it is becoming more and more urgent that feminists understand the need to pursue this demand.
vigorously. This is an issue of great importance to feminism. .
I should point out at the start that in relation to humans, uniformity should not be confused with equality, nor variation with inequality. Freely chosen behaviour does result in equality.
of outcome, where the outcome relates to subjective, individual perception. When the outcome is regarded as the objective.
distribution of different choices it will, of course, display variation. .
Francois Noel Babeuf was one of the earliest socialists, before the name was invented, one might say. He took the name Graccus, and his views were forged in the turmoil of the French.
Revolution. He was perhaps the first to set out very clearly the criteria for evaluating equality:.
"Equality must be measured by the capacity of the worker and the need of the consumer, not by the intensity of the labour and the quantity of things consumed. A man endowed with a certain degree of strength, when he lifts a weight of ten pounds, labours as much as another man with five times the strength when he lifts fifty pounds. He who, to satisfy a burning thirst, swallows a .
pitcher of water, enjoys no more than his comrade who, but slightly thirsty, sips a cupful. The aim of the communism in question is equality of pains and pleasures, not of consumable things and workers' tasks.".
Quoted from "Beyond Capital: Toward A Theory of Transition" by István Mészáros; Merlin Press, London; 1995; Page 221.
