Achieving Equality in Society: Key Strategies for Progress
School
Fanshawe College**We aren't endorsed by this school
Course
ENGLISH WRIT1030
Subject
Sociology
Date
Dec 12, 2024
Pages
2
Uploaded by MegaFang13264
Discuss the ways through which equality can be achieved in society.Equality is ensuring individuals or group of individuals are not treated differently or less positively ,on the basis of their specific protected characteristics including areas of race, gender ,disability ,religion or belief, sexual orientation or age.As Martin Luther King once said ‘injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere’.Equality is vital in any society. When there is inequality, it would be difficult for a nation to progress. It ensures that there is no discrimination against anyone. Everyone is considered to be equal and treated the same way. With equality, people in the society will have the freedom to associate with others, share theirknowledge and get involved in activities that can have a positive impact on society. Equality breeds confidence, productivity and makes people more sociable and leads to economic progress.Firstly,equality can be achieved through equal education opportunities.Education has both intrinsic and instrumental value for individuals and for societies as a whole.There is empirical evidence from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the world bank for 26 OECD countries for the years 1995 to 2015 that shows that adults with higher educational attainment have better health and lifespan compared to their less educated peers.Equal education opportunities means all societies benefit from productive and knowledgeable workers who can generate social surplus and respond to preferences. In addition, democratic societies need to create citizens who are capable of participating in the project of shared governance. The correlation between educational attainment and civic participation is strong and well-documented: educated citizens have more opportunities to obtain and exercise civic skills, are more interested in and informed about politics, and in turn, are more likely to vote.As a result,education can be use as a means to reach equality in society.Just as important,establishing equality policies at the workplace ensures equality in the society.Inequality at the workplace can be prejudice towards gender,age and race.According to a survey by the Mauritius Institute of Directors and Korn Ferry, the female presence has stagnated at 8.7% on the boards of directors of private companies. By way of comparison, the presence of women on boards of directors is 40.1% in Norway and 36% in France.Such gaps in gender inequality should beavoided in order to achieve equality in society.Governments should establish policies that ensures equality at the workplace. For instance ,in 2019,the law was amended in Mauritius to require public-listed companies to have at least one woman on their board of directors. Hence,establishing equality policies at the workplace ensures equality in the society.Moreover,equality can be achieved in society by banning child marriages and sexual harassment.In Sub-Saharan Africa, around 7 million girls are forced into an early marriage. But this is not only in Africa, in many poor countries child brides are made to give up their education in order to raise families, and their health and well-being is put at serious risk.One solution to stop child marriages is to ramp up poverty reduction strategies. Some poor families marry off their daughters, often at too young an age, because they prefer to have rich sons-in-law to provide them with
assistance and a way out of poverty. Another way to end child marriages is to lift the burden imposed by ethnic customs.In most countries where child marriages prevail such as Bangladesh ,Niger,Chad or Guinea the husband is seen as the one who rules. A daughter, wife and mother are first seen as the property of her father and then of her husband. Girls are seen as family burdens and men as kings.These views should be changed in order to achieve equality.Furthermore,violence against women and girls regardless of the age and ability should end.Gender inequality allows for violence against women to continue unabated. The United Nations (UN )has found that globally, one in three women will experience violence in her lifetime, with most violence against women perpetrated by a current or former intimate partner.While both men and women can be victims of violence, violence against women is the crucial element that reinforces men’s power and control over women throughout the world.The best way to end violence against women and girls is to prevent it from happening in the first place by addressing its root and structural causes.Prevention should start early in life, by educating and working with young boys and girls promoting respectful relationships and gender equality. Working with youth ensures sustained progress on preventing and eradicating gender-based violence. Last but not least,ending environmental inequalities can help in achieving equality in society. Environmental inequalities are the expression of an environmental burden that would be borne primarily by disadvantaged and or minority populations or by territories suffering from a certain poverty and exclusion of these inhabitants. An example of environmental inequality is differentiated exposure to an environmental impact such as pollution or risks of populations. In the United States, the awareness of cases of environmental injustice at the end of the 1970s was forged on concrete cases showing a “coincidence” between the location of highly polluting industrial infrastructures and the proximity of African-American or impoverished populations. By raising awareness on environmental inequalities,the society is one step closer in reaching equality.In the light of the above information,with proper education while raising awareness on serious matters such as violence against women and environmental inequalities and stopping workplace discrimination one can agree that achieving equality in society today is definitely not impossible.