Equal Rights, Equal Opportunities

Equal opportunity, or equality of opportunity, is a controversial decision-making standard without a precise definition involving fair choices within the public sphere. While it generally describes “open and fair competition” with equal chances for achieving sought–after jobs or positions as well as an absence of discrimination, the concept is elusive with a “wide range of meanings.” It is hard to measure, and implementation poses problems as well as disagreements about what to do. It is being applied to increasingly wider areas beyond employment including lending, housing, voting rights, and elsewhere.

The essence of the equality of opportunity is a stipulation that all people should be treated similarly, unhampered by artificial barriers or prejudices or preferences, except when particular “distinctions can be explicitly justified.” The aim is that important jobs should go to those “the most qualified”––persons most likely to perform ably in a given task––and not to go to persons for arbitrary or irrelevant reasons, such as circumstances of birth, upbringing, friendship ties to whoever is in power, religion, sex, ethnicity, race, caste, or “involuntary personal attributes” such as disability, age, or sexual preferences.

Discrimination towards women and girls, or what is known as gender-based discrimination, is one of the most pervasive human rights violations. It severely limits the ability of women, girls and the communities they live in to protect and promote their health.

Gender-based discrimination is irrevocably connected to negative health outcomes for women and girls. Its associated poor health outcomes are often compounded by other forms of inequality related to socioeconomic status, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religious affiliation or geographical location. While these challenges are imposing, and often encoded in "normalized" ways of living, International Women's Day renews our commitment to denounce violations in human rights and to challenge unequal systems, structures and practices that perpetuate health inequalities across the world.