Gratitude Post - March 10, 2023

I'm grateful for pursuits of equity!

As you may or may not be aware, yesterday, March 8, was International Women's Day.  A time to celebrate the contributions of women to the world at large, to remember the women who pioneering efforts paved the way for female representation in previously (or currently) male dominated professions, to recommit to pursuing equity between the sexes.

Whenever such topics are discussed, you often hear the words equity and equality, which are often expected to be understood to mean the same things.  I'm grateful that they aren't the same thing, and that equity is what we pursue.  And I'm grateful when my expectation that equity and equality were synonyms was reversed, and the differences of the two were explained to me.

Equality = everyone is provided the exact same thing and expected to be able to utilize it to achieve the desired end goal

Equity = everyone is given the opportunity to succeed by being provided with the tools that enable them to go from wherever they are to the desired end goal

Some may say that the differences between the two are minimal, but in the pictured example above we can really see ho equity is a concept that enables all people, whereas equality is a concept that enables some while ostracizing others.