## 1. Equality of Opportunity--Constraint or State of Affairs



The essentials of Equality of Opportunity are most clearly illustrated
through a contrast with Equality of Outcome (for critical reflections
on the contrast see Joseph 1980; Phillips 2004; Strauss 1992).
According to an everyday understanding, the notion of Equality of
Outcome entails that people should receive the same amount of some
good or goods, or enjoy the same rank or status, and deviations are
always bad. Whilst "Equality" as an ideal has profound
socio-political resonance in popular consciousness, it is
comparatively rare to see Equality of Outcome receive an explicit
defence (see Tawney 1931, for a forthright defence from the recent
past). Dworkin (2000: 2) goes further and suggests that not only is
Equality of Outcome unlikely to seem like a serious political ideal to
anyone, but there is nothing to be said for it whatsoever (but, see
Phillips 2004, who defends Equality of Outcome between groups as an
indicator for Equality of Opportunity between individuals). In
contrast, the ideal of Equality of Opportunity commands far more
widespread support (Swift 2014: 102; Temkin 2016. For a critique see
Cavanagh 2002). Under Equality of Opportunity differences in outcome
are justifiable, provided that individuals enjoy the
"opportunity" for the good or rank in the relevant sense
(for critical reflections on this thought, see Chambers 2009).



Equality of Opportunity can be "competitive" in that it
refers to a process by which persons compete for a good where some
persons' successful pursuit of the good will mean that others
fail--such as prospective employees applying for a job (for
emphasis on this facet, see Jacobs 2004). Less commonly, it can be
"non-competitive" in that it refers to cases where
persons' enjoyment of the good does not directly depend on
whether others attain it--such as eligibility for unemployment
benefit (see Sreenivasan 2014 for some reflections on how Equality of
Opportunity is sometimes ambiguous between the two)



The term Equality of Opportunity can be understood in two broadly
different, albeit related, ways, which are sometimes combined in
particular accounts (for work drawing attention to these broad
differences see Mason 2006; Holmes 2005; Radcliffe Richards 1997:
265-268) First, Equality of Opportunity is primarily seen as a
constraint on selection or distribution decisions for scarce positions
or goods. For example, it might be claimed that Equality of
Opportunity prohibits race and gender discrimination in employment
hiring decisions, to provide applicants with the due consideration
they are owed in the process. Here Equality of Opportunity is
understood in terms of permissible and impermissible criteria
determining the allocation of positions. Second, Equality of
Opportunity is seen as a social ideal concerning the structure of
society as a whole concerning which factors should play a role in
determining how well people fare, perhaps in comparison with one
another. For example, it might be claimed a society manifests Equality
of Opportunity only when social class does not hinder a person's
overall prospects for success. Here Equality of Opportunity is
understood as a quality of the social order, rather than a feature of
selection procedures.



The basic difference between these respective ways of thinking about
Equality of Opportunity is that the former focuses primarily on the
way allocative and selective decisions ought to be made and which
criteria should inform those decisions, whereas the latter focuses
primarily on whether people enjoy Equality of Opportunity as an
overall state of affairs. In line with a broad distinction drawn in
the context of conceptions of equality more generally, we might call
the former "deontic" conceptions of Equality of
Opportunity and the latter "telic" conceptions of Equality
of Opportunity (see Holmes 2005, for exploration of further
complexities).



Despite the general difference between deontic and telic ideas of
Equality of Opportunity, the distinction between these ways of
thinking about Equality of Opportunity should not be overdrawn. Both
ways of thinking about Equality of Opportunity focus on the factors
which are relevant or irrelevant to the determination of the
attainment of advantages but are different to the extent that one
relates this to the quality of a decision-making process, and the
other relates this to the broader distributive profile of society.
Moreover, the deontic and telic views may be connected in several
ways. For instance, one might hold a deontic view of Equality of
Opportunity that prohibits sex discrimination in hiring precisely
because prohibiting sex discrimination is judged necessary to
instantiate a version of telic Equality of Opportunity, under which
no-one suffers generally lower social prospects because of their sex
(for a view that links the wrongfulness of discrimination to Equality
of Opportunity see Segall 2013). One might also hold that a given
deontic view of Equality of Opportunity is conditional on some form of
telic Equality of Opportunity. For instance, in university selection
processes, one might hold that it is appropriate to select the best
qualified candidates (a deontic version of Equality of Opportunity)
*only when* all candidates have enjoyed relevantly equal
opportunities to achieve qualifications (a telic version of Equality
of Opportunity) (Clayton 2012: 421). See
 section 10
 below for further discussion.


## 2. Conceptions of Equality of Opportunity



Equality of Opportunity is contested (Joseph 1980; Gross 1987), and
different conceptions of Equality of Opportunity can be distinguished
from one another according to the factors which are seen as
inappropriate influences on persons' prospects for success. Take
a committee tasked with selecting between university admissions
applications trying to determine the appropriate selection criteria
whilst honouring the requirement to ensure Equality of Opportunity for
all candidates. One view amongst the committee could be that Equality
of Opportunity is satisfied when there is no explicit race or sex
discrimination in the selection process. A further view might be that
this is necessary but insufficient, and Equality of Opportunity is
only satisfied when legacy admissions, giving preferential treatment
to family of alumni, are also disallowed. Others on the committee
might argue that although it is right that race, sex, and legacy
discrimination should be ruled out in order to ensure Equality of
Opportunity, the selection criteria should also take into account the
social disadvantages which result in some candidates being better
qualified than others. Their view is that selection criteria based on
which candidates are best qualified means that socially disadvantaged
candidates do not enjoy relevantly equal opportunities to gain
admission. The different views voiced within the committee represent
different views about the factors which are inappropriate to consider
when deciding who is selected and, in that way, they reflect different
conclusions about what Equality of Opportunity requires. The broader
point, then, is that different conceptions of Equality of Opportunity
differ regarding which factors render the "opportunity" an
unequal one.



The fact that conceptions of Equality of Opportunity differ in this
way helps explain *why* the notion of Equality of Opportunity
is contested. People take different views about which factors are
morally significant, and, in turn, which factors should or should not
affect persons' prospects for a position or good. In that way,
Equality of Opportunity can be seen as an *essentially contested
concept* (Gallie 1955). The widespread agreement that Equality of
Opportunity is a good thing in fact conceals importantly different
views about what Equality of Opportunity actually consists in. The
term "opportunity" in Equality of Opportunity indicates
that a good is in some sense *available* but not necessarily
guaranteed. (Westen [1985: 839], for instance, suggests an
"opportunity" is less than a guarantee but more than a
mere possibility.) Depending on one's conception of Equality of
Opportunity, possessing an "opportunity" may not, however,
mean that one has any realistic prospect of attaining the position or
good in question (Mason 2006: 22-26). For instance, it might be
claimed of a given society that everyone enjoys the Equal Opportunity
to become a professional athlete, given that there are no formal
constraints on eligibility, however there will be many for whom their
physical limitations make this wholly unrealistic (for discussion of
"opportunity" in relation to "freedom", see
Campbell 1974-75). Cases such as this lead G. A. Cohen (1989:
916-917) to draw a distinction between Equality of Opportunity
and Equality of *Access.* The thought here is that although we
don't normally say that someone lacks an *opportunity*
simply because their physical or mental capacities limit their ability
to achieve something, we still need a
term--"access"--with which to articulate
inequalities that derive from those sources. On this view, although
there may be Equal Opportunity to become a professional athlete,
physical inequalities mean that there is unequal *access* to
becoming one. Cohen's recommendation notwithstanding, there are
conceptions of Equality of Opportunity that do use the language of
"opportunity" to refer to such sources of inability. For
instance, it might be argued that demarcating separate categories for
women's sports is a way of providing Equality of Opportunity for
women in sport because an unsegregated category would deprive women of
the chance to compete on fair terms, given the physical differences
between men and women (for a critique of this view, see Tannsjo 2007).
Or it might be argued that the structure of sporting competition as a
whole (for instance, the range of available sports) should be
organized so as to provide for a wider range of physical advantages so
as to offer Equal Opportunity in sport (English 1978).



There is also disagreement over whether or not
"opportunity" ought to be understood as a subject
dependent concept in the sense that an individual's values bear
on whether something qualifies as relevantly open. For instance,
Parekh (2000: 241) argues that something fails to qualify as an
opportunity in the relevant sense if taking that path involves
transgressing a person's deeply held commitments--such as
an orthodox Jew being required to take off their yarmulke as a
precondition for doing a certain job. On the other hand, Brian Barry
(2001: 36-38) contends that the range of opportunities a person
faces is a matter of the "objective state of affairs" and
not dependent on the values of the person facing those opportunities
and the choices they make between them. What this indicates, then, is
that "opportunity" is really a placeholder for the idea
that certain factors should not obstruct the availability of a good or
a person's prospects for success (even if other factors, deemed
legitimate, render the good unavailable).



This way of thinking about different conceptions of Equality of
Opportunity suggests that the range of different conceptions of
Equality of Opportunity is very broad indeed. Each conception will be
distinctive depending on which constellation of factors is deemed to
obstruct the prospects of success in a way that renders the
opportunities unequal. One way of roughly ordering different
conceptions of Equality of Opportunity on a continuum of sorts is,
therefore, to situate them according to the breadth of factors which
obstruct Equality of Opportunity. Conceptions which identify
relatively few factors which obstruct Equality of Opportunity will be
at one end of the continuum, with conceptions identifying a larger
number of factors towards the other end (for this broad approach to
organizing conceptions of Equality of Opportunity, see Cohen 2009:
4-6; Miller 2013: 118-119; Segall 2013: 3-4; Swift
2014: 102-109). Although imprecise, this is a useful way of
distinguishing thinner, formal conceptions of Equality of Opportunity
from thicker, more substantial ones.


## 3. Formal Equality of Opportunity



The term Formal Equality of Opportunity is often used to pick out a
particular conception of Equality of Opportunity, but it may be better
understood to refer to a *family of conceptions* under which
Equality of Opportunity obtains when advantages are in some sense
"open to all", even though there are a potentially
significant range of further background factors which will determine
how likely it is for individuals to be able to successfully secure
them. A particularly thin conception of Formal Equality of Opportunity
might hold that persons enjoy equal opportunities simply when there is
no legal impediment or other coercive restriction on access to the
position or good. Laws against women serving in the military, for
instance, would mean that women lacked the Equality of Opportunity to
serve, as would formal exclusion from consideration in the application
process, or women being coercively intimidated not to apply to serve.
On this view of Equality of Opportunity, the only factors which render
the opportunities unequal are certain restrictions on the freedom of
some individuals to compete for or access the position or good in
question.



A slightly thicker conception of Equality of Opportunity might expand
this to include a greater range of restrictions on freedom, beyond
legal restriction, formal exclusion, and overt coercion. For instance,
it might be argued that enjoying a meaningful opportunity to compete
for a position depends on being in a position to know about the
existence of the competition. For this reason, it might be thought
that Equality of Opportunity for positions requires that they be
publicized to a reasonable degree. It might also be argued that
Equality of Opportunity is undercut by artificially constructed
technical barriers to success deliberately designed to effectively
exclude certain persons. A clear case of this would be the US during
the late nineteenth and twentieth century where literacy tests and
"grandfather voting clauses"--whereby voting was
disallowed unless one's grandfather had voted--were aimed
at the *de facto* exclusion of "black" Americans
from exercising their formal voting rights.



These very thin ways of conceiving of Equality of Opportunity identify
only a limited range of factors which count as
opportunity-undermining. Thus understood, Equality of Opportunity
rules out caste hierarchy and manifest constraints on competing for or
obtaining a good but fails to address a broad swathe of other factors
which might plausibly be considered relevant for Equality of
Opportunity. For this reason, as a political ideal of society or as a
generally appropriate standard for competitive selection in areas like
employment and education, these thin conceptions are often considered
to be inadequate ways of thinking about Equality of Opportunity.



A still thicker conception of Equality of Opportunity, but still
appropriately classified as Formal, also holds that factors such as
nepotism and direct discrimination based on factors such as race, sex,
and religion undermine Equality of Opportunity. Such a way of thinking
about Equality of Opportunity thereby identifies a further range of
factors that are impermissible determinants of different
persons' prospects for success. A useful shorthand is to think
about this conception of Equality of Opportunity as including an
anti-discrimination principle, under which certain factors, like race
and sex, should not enhance or detract from a person's prospects
of success in a competitive application. This matter is complicated by
a number of further considerations. First, some racialized or
sex-based characteristics may, for some positions or roles, be
considered appropriate criteria for selection--such as selecting
an actor to play the part of a member of a particular racialized
group. Second, there is a difference between taking certain factors as
themselves a reason to select someone and using those factors as
proxies for identifying other reasons for selection--such as
taking honesty and conscientiousness as criteria for selection and
drawing on profiling data which suggests that women are generally more
likely to have such qualities in greater measure. Third, even when
applicants are not directly discriminated against on the basis of
factors such as race and sex, other criteria for selection might
indirectly discriminate against individuals with those
characteristics--such as criteria which downgrade applicants who
may need extended leave and the potential this has to indirectly
discriminate against women during and after pregnancy.


## 4. Meritocratic Equality of Opportunity



To this point, conceptions of Equality of Opportunity have been
arranged according to the factors which are identified as
inappropriate determinants of people's prospects for success. By
implication this leaves open which further factors should in fact
determine who succeeds in a competition or who obtains a good. There
is an influential way of conceiving of Equality of Opportunity which
includes the aforementioned conditions on Equality of
Opportunity--no legal barriers, no formal exclusion,
anti-discrimination protections--but also adds the requirement
that applicants for a position be selected according to who is best
qualified. Equality of Opportunity, thus understood, requires both
that the competition for positions and advantages is open in the
relevant ways, and also that the criteria for successful pursuit
should be governed by whatever it is which makes competitors best
qualified to perform a role (James Fishkin 1983; Flew 1981; Daniels
1978; Mason 2001; Miller 1999: chs. 7-9; Sher 1988). This might
be termed a "meritocratic" conception of Equality of
Opportunity inasmuch this conception requires that persons be judged
on their "merits" in relation to the post they are
competing for, although it is worth noting that the label
"meritocratic" is itself deployed differently in different
work. This idea of an open competition, in which success is determined
by one's qualifications for a role, is also sometimes referred
to as "careers open to talents". It is worth recalling
here that there can be telic or deontic versions of the meritocratic
conception. Although the notion of the "best qualified"
lends itself most naturally to deontic principles concerning the
appropriate selection criteria for positions, it is coherent to make
judgements about a meritocratic society overall, and to consider how
far people's prospects overall are determined by their merit as
opposed to other factors.



The relationship between formal Equality of Opportunity, as elaborated
above, and meritocratic Equality of Opportunity is contested.
Radcliffe Richards (1997: 260-263), for instance, argues that
the two ideas are radically discontinuous and do not have any
necessary implications for one another. On the other hand, Mason
(2006: 29-32) argues that it is hard to establish what counts as
unfair discrimination under the formal view without some account of
what makes something a legitimate qualification, which leads us
towards a meritocratic view.



There are several further things to note about the meritocratic
conception of Equality of Opportunity. First, there is nothing in the
meritocratic view which entails distribution via free market
mechanisms, even though such a view is commonly associated with the
free market. It is consistent to conceive of a centrally planned
distribution of social positions which is governed by best qualified
criteria (Mason 2006: 20). Indeed, an unregulated free market may
quite conceivably involve violations of meritocratic Equality of
Opportunity if firms discriminate against some applicants. It might be
tempting to think that a free market naturally tilts towards adopting
a meritocratic conception of Equality of Opportunity, given that firms
in the market will be incentivized to hire employees who will best
serve firms' interests. This is predicated on at least two
further suppositions which may not necessarily be true. First, that
the "best qualified" candidate under a meritocratic view
will in fact generally best serve the firm's interest. Second,
that firms generally make rational hiring decisions, or at least will
be forced to make rational hiring decisions over time.



Indeed, there are a range of further complexities which means that it
is not straightforwardly true that the "best qualified"
candidate is the same as the candidate which best advances a
firm's interest. For one thing, there are different ways of
thinking about the value of an open competition which selects the best
qualified. On one meritocratic conception of Equality of Opportunity,
what matters is whether a position is filled with the best qualified
candidate, rather than this being done through an "open
competition". It would be consistent with this view to headhunt
particular individuals for roles if this were more efficient at
identifying the best qualified. This might still be considered an open
competition under Equality of Opportunity inasmuch as there were no
relevant constraints on others becoming the best qualified (and then
being headhunted). On a different meritocratic conception, though,
there is a reason to value an open competition, even if that will
sometimes result in a less well-qualified candidate being selected,
because doing so putatively gives potential candidates a relevantly
fair chance at attaining the position. The difference between these
views, at bottom, is how far one values Equality of Opportunity for
the outcomes it delivers (the best qualified attaining the positions)
as compared with the procedures it instantiates (the opportunities
afforded to all to attain the position under a best qualified
selection criteria). Both outcome and procedural oriented versions of
the meritocratic conceptions of Equality of Opportunity are consistent
with condemning certain kinds of profiling, even when profiling would
be a rational way of furthering a firm's interest (for a survey
of reasons to be troubled by statistical discrimination of this kind,
see Lippert-Rasmussen 2007). For instance, suppose data supported the
conclusion that appealing to sex or racialized group membership was a
good proxy for performance in a certain role, and that a firm could
make substantial efficiency savings in the hiring process by using
such a proxy. A procedural version of meritocratic Equality of
Opportunity might naturally condemn this form of profiling as
inconsistent with a relevantly open competition for the position,
given that potentially qualified individuals are disadvantaged using
the proxy. But even an outcome-oriented version has scope for
condemning the profiling, either on the grounds that it violates a
moral side-constraint, or on the grounds that it remains imperfect at
identifying the best qualified (even if it is more efficient than
other alternatives).



Furthermore, it may be morally troubling for an employer to take into
account certain employee characteristics, even when those
characteristics render an employee "better qualified" for
a role in a way that serves the employer's interest. Consider a
restaurant owner seeking to hire a new waiter. The restaurant owner
wants to appoint the candidate who is the best qualified according to
criteria which include being punctual, diligent, honest, and likely to
promote repeat custom amongst the clientele, with the latter being
overwhelmingly important. Suppose, however, that the restaurant is in
an area rife with racist prejudice against members of certain
racialized minority groups and that members of those groups are held
in contempt by the majority of the local population, who constitute
the vast majority of the restaurant clientele. Though the restaurant
owner does not harbour any racial prejudice themselves, they also know
that hiring a racialized minority will positively undermine repeat
custom. An antidiscrimination principle, which prohibits directly
discriminating against applicants on racialized grounds, seems to be
in tension with an unmodified meritocratic principle that requires
appointing the best qualified in this sense. Any racialized minority
individual will be less "well-qualified", given the racial
prejudice present in the local community. In this way, norms and
preferences which would be inadmissible to directly consider might
nevertheless filter through to determine who is successful in the
competition by determining who satisfies the "best
qualified" criteria.



Because such qualifications--like the ability to encourage repeat
custom--depend on the reactions of recipients of a service, they
are sometimes referred to as "reaction" qualifications
(Alexander 1992; Lippert-Rasmussen 2009; Lippert-Rasmussen 2014: ch.
9; Mason 2017; Wertheimer 1983). Many reaction qualifications will
appear quite unproblematic. For instance, a department store might
want to hire customer-facing staff that are considered polite, or a
comedy club might want to hire acts that punters find funny. However,
examples such as the case of the racist local community cast doubt on
whether this is true of all reaction qualifications and raise the
question as to which kinds of reactions are legitimate to take into
account and which are not (Lippert-Rasmussen 2009; Mason 2017). The
spectre of morally suspect reaction qualifications is a further
indication that the relationship between firms' interests and a
meritocratic conception of Equality of Opportunity might not be
straightforward.



More generally, it is worth remembering that the meritocratic
conception of Equality of Opportunity--an open competition
selecting the best qualified--does not itself tell us which
positions should exist in society; what makes someone "best
qualified" for those positions; and how those positions should
be rewarded. Nothing in the meritocratic conception, for instance,
tells us which jobs should be available and at what levels of
differential reward. Indeed, although the meritocratic conception
tends to be seen as a justification for inequalities, it is
technically consistent with a meritocratic conception of Equality of
Opportunity that different social positions do not offer differential
levels of reward.



Moreover, just as the meritocratic conception is consistent with
non-free market allocation of positions, it is also consistent with
positions in society being organized in a range of different ways,
provided the selection for those positions is open to all and filled
according to the best qualified criteria. Suppose we have a factory
production line with a number of workstations which each require very
different skills to operate. The first requires heavy lifting, the
second requires quick thinking, the third requires manual dexterity,
the fourth requires attention to detail. There are different ways in
which working practices could be organized amongst employees. One
option would be to have each employee specialize in working only one
station. Another option would be to have each employee work each
station for a period of several weeks and then rotate to work another
station for several weeks and so on. A further option would be to have
employees work each of the stations throughout the day, so that they
followed the good they are producing and worked with it at each
station. The meritocratic conception is indifferent as to how the
factory work practices are organized, provided the employees are
selected under an open competition according to their qualifications.
Yet which workplace practices are adopted may have significant
implications for whom it is appropriate to select as an employee. The
first option may favour selecting those who are adept at specializing
in one of the relevant workplace tasks; the second option may favour
selecting those who are versatile in the sense that they are able to
acquire a number of different skills; the third option may favour
selecting those who are adaptable in the sense that they are able to
efficiently shift between different tasks during the same process. The
same is true when it comes to the structure of society as a whole,
such that which positions are available will have profound
implications for who has the best chance to attain them (for critiques
which emphasize these factors, see Markovits 2019; Sandel 2020). And
there will be a further question with respect to level of reward
different positions ought to be given. Because meritocratic Equality
of Opportunity, thus understood, is silent on these further questions
concerning how society should be organized, and how far persons should
have *an equal opportunity to become the best qualified*, it is
regarded by some as a relatively limited component of the justice of
society as a whole.


## 5. Substantive Equality of Opportunity



The meritocratic conception above is a relatively formal view of
Equality of Opportunity. It holds that persons enjoy equal
opportunities in the relevant sense provided they are not obstructed
by legal or certain technical obstacles or by some forms of
discrimination, and that under such conditions persons should compete
for positions under a process designed to select the best qualified.
In one sense, the meritocratic conception is quite a strict one
concerning the factors which are allowed to determine who successfully
takes advantage of their opportunities, in that, under the "best
qualified" criteria, only qualities appropriate to the position
or good rightly determine the outcome of competitive applications.
However, the meritocratic conception remains relatively formal in that
it does not take into account broader obstacles to getting qualified
(or, indeed, which qualifications ought to be rewarded) and so does
not take into account a wider range of factors which might have a
substantial bearing on persons' chances to successfully compete
for social advantages (B. Barry 2005: ch.8)



A famous illustration of this concern is given by Bernard Williams,
who offers the example of a society in which great prestige is
attached to membership in a certain warrior class (Williams 1962
[1973]). Historically, members of the class were recruited from the
wealthy class in society only, but reforms have resulted in the
competition for membership now becoming open to all members in
society. Under the terms of the competition the warriors are selected
based on their physical strength. Although the competition for
selection is now an open one, it transpires that warriors are still
only selected from the wealthy class in society because the population
in other social classes is so under-nourished that they lack the
physical strength to successfully compete for warrior status. It might
be argued that meaningful Equality of Opportunity for membership in
the warrior class has not really been achieved because the means to
compete on relevantly equal terms are denied to some
competitors--those from poorer social classes lack a realistic
prospect for successfully satisfying the criteria for selection, in
this case physical strength. One response here might be to argue that
Equality of Opportunity
*is* satisfied because those from poorer social classes are not
being excluded *because they are poor*, but simply because they
are physically weaker, which is a relevant criterion for selection to
the warrior class. In reply, it might be argued that this would amount
to a merely formal and insubstantial way of thinking about Equality of
Opportunity, given that those from the poorer social classes are
effectively excluded, even if they are not explicitly barred (see
Williams 1962 [1973: 244-245]).



For this reason, it might be thought that Equality of Opportunity
requires that people enjoy the substantive means to take advantage of
the formal opportunities available to them through open competition.
Views which take this line can be broadly categorized as
*substantive* conceptions of Equality of Opportunity. As with
different formal conceptions of Equality of Opportunity, substantive
conceptions differ with respect to the way in which the opportunities
should be substantive.



Suppose we complicate slightly Williams' warrior society example
and say that warrior selection is based on physical strength, agility,
and sword skills. Suppose that adequate nutrition is necessary for
physical strength, and sufficient physical strength is in turn
required to develop the right agility and wield the heavy sword that
the warriors use. One substantive view might hold that Equality of
Opportunity is secured when, and only when, citizens from all social
classes enjoy adequate nutrition. All citizens then have some
realistic prospect of developing the physical strength which is
necessary to procuring the further qualities that enable them to
meaningfully compete for warrior positions. However, suppose further
that the schools to which members of the wealthy class send their
children offer agility training and sword skills classes as part of
the curriculum, whereas children from poorer classes go to schools
without these lessons. It might be argued that although children have
nutrition sufficient to give them some degree of meaningful
competition, they do not have a relevantly equal prospects, given the
other educational disadvantages they face relative to others. These
educational inequalities might be countered by instituting an outreach
program which rolls out the same forms of training in education to all
other schools in less wealthy parts of the society.



One might take the view that this would now be sufficient to create
the conditions for Equality of Opportunity, given that these
educational inequalities across different social classes have been
addressed. The elimination of those educational inequalities is likely
to result in increased competition for selection to the warrior class,
given that a larger pool of children possess a more meaningful
prospect of developing the necessary qualities. As a consequence,
suppose that wealthy families begin investing in private sword skill
tuition for their children and that the tuition is far too expensive
for parents in poorer social classes to afford. If this tuition gives
children from wealthy social classes a competitive advantage, it might
be argued that this undermines Equality of Opportunity, given that
opportunities for children to successfully enter the warrior class are
not relevantly equal. It should be clear from this, then, that
different substantive views can be distinguished depending on the
range of factors they identify as those which undermine Equality of
Opportunity.


## 6. Fair Equality of Opportunity



One prominent substantive conception of Equality of Opportunity which
addresses factors such as the investment in sword skill tuition by
parents in the wealthy social class is the one offered by John Rawls
that he labels Fair Equality of Opportunity (FEO). There are two
components to FEO. First, offices and positions are to be open to all
in a formal sense under "careers open to talent", or, as
it has been labelled above, the meritocratic conception (Rawls 1999:
53, 57, 62). This is supplemented with the further requirement that
all should have the *fair chance* to attain those offices and
positions (Rawls 1999: 63; 2001: 43-44). A fair chance here
means that



> 
> 
> those who have the same level or talent and ability and the same
> willingness to use these gifts should have the same prospects of
> success regardless of their social class of origin. (Rawls 2001:
> 44)
> 
> 
> 



In other words, it is consistent with FEO that persons'
prospects for success vary depending on their levels of talent and
abilities and their willingness to use them, however persons'
social class should not differentially affect those prospects (see
also Miller 1996).



Rawls's FEO is substantive by way of taking account of the
background conditions which differentially affect persons'
respective chances of fulfilling the meritocratic selection criteria.
FEO does not obtain when social class structure results in persons
from some social classes facing diminished prospects for obtaining the
skills and qualifications necessary to compete on relevantly equal
terms with others. For instance, if children from less privileged
social backgrounds face lower quality education which results in
lesser prospects for developing the skills and self-discipline to
compete for rewarding jobs, FEO fails to obtain, even though selection
for those jobs is based on meritocratic criteria. In this context,
income inequalities between social classes and the education system,
broadly construed, are plausibly important factors in determining how
far persons face relevantly equal prospects.



On its face, Rawls's FEO is a simple idea. Talent and effort are
appropriate criteria for success in the competition for socially
advantageous positions and roles, but differences in social class
background should neither directly influence the competition, nor
indirectly influence how far persons can develop talent or make an
effort. That simplicity belies many further complications, however
(for a forthright critique see Arneson 1999).



First, Rawls frames FEO as opposing the unequal effects of
"social class" (Rawls 1999: 63). At other times, Rawls
presents FEO as addressing differences in "income class"
(Rawls 1999: 270). He also uses the term "sectors in
society" to seemingly refer to the same idea (Rawls 1999: 63).
It is not clear whether Rawls intends these different terms to be
equivalent. After all, one can in principle envisage a society in
which income levels are all equal and yet a social class system of
some form exists, whereby there is a hierarchy of rank and status and
citizens in the upper echelons enjoy social goods and opportunities
unrelated to income (for some discussion of the relation between
material inequality and social inequality, see B. Barry 1998; Wolff
2017). If only *income class* differences are objectionable
influences on persons' opportunities under FEO, then this social
hierarchy is unobjectionable, even if it has a profound effect on the
chances different persons have to compete for social positions. A
sensible reading of Rawls takes him to understand social class to
include income differences without being exhausted by such
differences. This, of course, raises the further question of what is
to count as a "social class" or "social
sector" based inequality.



The focus on social class specifically also makes FEO appear
relatively narrow. Insofar as FEO holds that social class should not
affect persons' prospects to succeed, it seems to imply that
unequal prospects *within* social classes are unobjectionable.
For instance, if children from rich backgrounds generally receive a
better education which gives them a substantial advantage in the job
market, this would be clearly incompatible with FEO. However, consider
the case where this is not true as a general matter but simply that
*only some* rich families invest heavily in their
children's education such that only that subset of children from
rich backgrounds have substantial advantages. Alternatively, in a
still more contrived example, suppose that social class is completely
uncorrelated with public educational development and that state
education is equalized across society but that particular families,
randomly distributed across different social classes, invest heavily
in their children's education to give them a competitive
advantage in later life. In both instances, the inequalities in
prospects do not appear to be objectionable under FEO if FEO is
understood to object to inequalities resulting from *social
class*. However, if FEO is designed to ensure a fair chance to
obtain jobs and positions and this means, in Rawls's terms,
"that those with similar abilities and skills should have
similar life chances" (Rawls 1999: 63), then it seems that these
other non-class-based inequalities should also be deemed
objectionable.



Second, it might be argued that there is a tension inherent in FEO. On
the one hand social class inequality is considered to be an
inappropriate source of competitive advantage. On the other hand,
under FEO, differences in talent and effort *are* appropriate
criteria for competitive selection for jobs. And yet, it is natural to
suppose that social class affects the development of talent and has an
impact on how much effort people are willing to make (Anderson 2004;
Elford 2016; Swift & Marshall 1997; for related discussion see
Chambers 2009: 379-381). One option to avoid this tension would
be to say that differences in *native* talent and
*native* disposition to make an effort are appropriate
determinants of success in competition for social advantage. So even
though developed levels of talent and effort will differ due to social
class influences, we should select for jobs based on the native
characteristics. The problem, here, is that it is not clear whether
native talent and native disposition to make an effort pick out
anything especially socially significant (Anderson 2004), or
straightforwardly measurable. And this seems to be a radical departure
from most ways of understanding what makes a candidate
"best-qualified" under the meritocratic element of FEO. A
tall, well-coordinated and exceptionally athletic person might have
very high native talent for becoming a basketball player, but if they
have not spent any of their life developing a talent for basketball
they are hardly more "well-qualified" for team selection
than someone with less native talent but who has otherwise much more
advanced skill at basketball. In short, it seems to be talent and
effort at the more developed end (or at least with enough remaining
potential to be developed) which seem to matter under the meritocratic
conception, and yet the "fair chance" element of FEO seems
to hold that it is inappropriate for those with superior developed
talent to have an advantage in the competition for positions when the
superiority of that talent is the result of social class factors
(James Fishkin 1983: 30-32).



A third complication when thinking about FEO is that social class
cleavages might reflect factors which account for unequal
opportunities without it being straightforwardly the case that social
class directly causes those unequal opportunities. Suppose social
class stratification is well-correlated with later success in the
competition for jobs, such that social class is a strong predictor for
job market success. As illustrated above, one typical way in which
social class might result in unfair chances to compete for socially
advantageous positions is by giving children from privileged social
classes better education, broadly construed, in order to give them a
better prospect at becoming the best qualified. Consider a possible
alternative explanation of the correlation. It could be the case that
there is a higher level of *native* talent in the more
advantaged social class and very little inter-class mixing, such that
citizens in the advantaged social class only tend to meet, partner up
with, and bear children with fellow members of the same social class.
Perhaps this results in native talent levels being inherited by the
children born in that same social class, leading to the same process
continuing. In that way, the high native talent levels are
self-perpetuating and the lack of inter-class mixing results in the
correlation between social class and job market success continuing
over time. The question is what should FEO say about this? Social
class position is a strong predictor of job market success, but not
because social class factors influence the development of talent and
effort. Of course, it could still be said that social class plays a
formative role in the relationship between social class and job market
success precisely because social class norms and expectations shape
and condition the degree of inter-class mixing in the society. So, the
resulting stratification of talent and effort along class lines is not
itself independent of the operation of social class. Still, although
social class is a part of the explanation for the inequalities in the
competition for social positions, the role it plays seems importantly
different. In this case social class does not directly influence the
development of talent and effort for children who already
exist--by way of greater educational resources for some children
over others, for instance--but, rather, social class determines
which children are born in which social classes to begin with.



A further case in which social class and the development of talent
might be connected is in the development of *native* talent
during gestation. For instance, if pregnant women from less advantaged
social classes lack the means for adequate nutrition, this may affect
the "native talent" of the children they bear. In that
sense social class might differentially affect a child's
prospects in the competition for socially advantageous position even
before birth, and not simply by way of post-birth education and
development (B. Barry 2005: 47-50; Kollar & Loi 2015; Loi,
Del Savio, & Stupka 2013).



Fourth, as with formal equality of opportunity, FEO does not itself
address which rewards ought to be attached to the different roles and
positions (although other parts of Rawls' theory constrain
permissible inequalities). As a consequence, it's possible that,
under FEO, winning or losing in the competition for certain social
positions will have substantial implications for one's later
opportunities. The clearest illustration of this are the opportunities
afforded in later life through success in the education system.
Success in the competition for school and university places results in
the development of merit and the enhancement of qualifications for
those successful candidates, which in turn gives them advantages when
it comes to the competition for desirable social roles and positions.
The cycle continues where success in that later competition for entry
level social roles can similarly offer advantages in competition for
further social roles. Success within the education system can thereby
set some those successful candidates on a pathway towards a range of
subsequent opportunities whilst cleaving away unsuccessful candidates
to a position of disadvantage, unable to compete for a range of roles
and positions for which success in an earlier competition in education
was required. And yet, this is apparently consistent with FEO,
provided all individuals enjoyed a relevantly fair chance to compete
on the basis of merit for those earlier opportunities in education.
Joseph Fishkin (2014) labels this type of structure of opportunities a
"bottleneck" and commends a mechanism of
"opportunity pluralism" to address it. Under opportunity
pluralism there are a larger number of pathways over the course of
persons' lives to successfully compete for different goods,
rather than a narrower route to securing those goods through success
in a limited range of competitions earlier in life (Joseph Fishkin
2014: ch. 3). Similarly, Jacobs (2004) argues that a defensible
conception of Equality of Opportunity ought to regulate the rewards
and losses (the "stakes") in competitions for role and
positions and both broaden the distribution of opportunities to gain
as well as limit the degree to which individuals can gain and lose in
each competition.



A fifth complication again relates to the potential narrowness of FEO
as Rawls states the idea. Social class is typically understood to
relate to a stratification of persons along a rough cluster of social
and economic dimensions. In that sense it is different from other ways
in which people might be grouped together and face disadvantages as
members of a group. It is different, for example, from racialized
group membership, gender, and sex. Insofar as FEO addresses only
*social class* disadvantages, rather than these other potential
sources of unfair disadvantages, it might be thought to fail to
address other factors which undermine meaningful Equality of
Opportunity (Wolff 2017). For instance, although direct race, gender,
and sex discrimination in hiring is ruled out under FEO (by dint of
the requirement that positions be "open to all"),
racialized group membership, gender, and sex might be a source of
unfair disadvantage in less direct ways (Rawls 1999: 129-130).
Susan Moller Okin (1989) argues, for example, that the gendered
structure of the family is a major obstacle to Equality of Opportunity
for women and girls, particularly because women are usually the
primary caregivers for children. The unequal share of household labour
undercuts Equality of Opportunity for women, both within and outside
the family unit itself, given that women's opportunities for
economic success and attainment of political office are so constrained
by what is required of them in the home (Okin 1989: 116, 123; for
discussion of some of the measures which might be taken to equalize
opportunities between men and women in relation to this, see Bergmann
2008; Brighouse & Wright 2008; Gheaus & Robeyns 2011; Gornick
& Meyers 2008).



There are at least four mechanisms by which such factors might affect
how far people enjoy meaningfully equal opportunities. First, societal
factors related to racialized group membership and gender might
influence the development of the talents relevant for selection under
the meritocratic conception. For instance, suppose conceptions of
children's aptitude for certain subjects in schools are
prejudiced on racialized or gender lines, resulting in members of some
racialized groups or one gender being disproportionately streamed into
classes where the quality of education is lower. In this case, their
prospects for future success in the job market are diminished by
factors other than social class. Second, societal factors other than
social class might be thought to affect the development of ambition
and the disposition to make an effort. Take a society where
conceptions of race and gender are socially salient, and
children's pursuit of career paths tends to be heavily
influenced by whether or not they see others with the same racialized
or gender characteristics succeeding in those vocations. Children
might simply fail to recognize a vocation as a possible path
"for someone like them" if there are very few others
succeeding in that vocation who share their characteristics. In this
way, it might be argued that factors other than social class can
dampen ambition and effort-making dispositions in ways that undercut
meaningful equal opportunity for certain jobs and roles. Third, there
might be certain social constraints on participation in the
competition for socially advantageous positions that are
non-developmental but reflect more general norms and expectations
concerning who should apply for jobs and what a person has to
sacrifice to do so (Phillips 2006). For instance, dominant social
expectations concerning women's role as primary caregivers might
be thought to constrain equal opportunity for participation in the
labour market beyond the household. Fourth, and relatedly, as noted
above in
 section 5,
 because FEO leaves open what constitutes a talent, a scheme of FEO
might, in principle, leave in place systematic disadvantages for
members of certain groups. For instance, even if there is no direct
sex-based discrimination against women in employment selection, a lack
of workplace accommodation for leave during pregnancy, and measures
designed to ensure that such absence is not disadvantageous, might be
considered indirect discrimination against women. To address such
potential sources of inequality, it might be argued that FEO should be
broadened (Miller 2013: 122-123, although Miller is skeptical
that Rawls can accommodate all of the inequality upsetting effects of
family life). Under such an adapted version of FEO, then, enjoyment of
a "fair chance" to develop the talent and effort required
for success in the competition for role and offices must take account
of factors beyond "social class". Which factors do and do
not undermine a "fair chance" will, of course, be a matter
of further debate between different conceptions of FEO thus
construed.


## 7. Equality of Opportunity and the Family



One thing these matters draw our attention to, however, is the
potential for Equality of Opportunity to conflict with other
considerations and values. A substantial amount of work has been
devoted to the scope for conflict between the demands of Equality of
Opportunity and the role of the family in particular (Brighouse &
Swift 2009; James Fishkin 1983; 1987; Joseph Fishkin 2014:
48-56; MacLeod, 2002; Mason 2006: ch. 3; Miller 2013;
Munoz-Darde 1999; Okin 1989; Swift 2005). As indicated above,
different families will foster different environments and take
different measures for children which will often manifest in
differences in prospects. Indeed, Rawls himself notes that "the
family may be a barrier to equal chances between individuals"
given that



> 
> 
> the internal life and culture of the family influence, perhaps as much
> as anything else, a child's motivation and his capacity to gain
> from education, and so in turn his life prospects. (Rawls 1999:
> 265)
> 
> 
> 



Rawls maintains that FEO does not require the eradication of such
differences across families, because it only requires correcting for
social class inequality (Rawls 1999: 265, although other passages in
Rawls seem in tension with this, for instance where he concedes that
FEO can "be only imperfectly carried out, at least as long as
some form of the family exists" (1999: 64)). Nevertheless,
because the existence of the family as a social institution will
always result in unequal chances for different individuals, he poses
the question



> 
> 
> Is the family to be abolished then? Taken by itself and given a
> certain primacy, the idea of equality of opportunity inclines in this
> direction. (Rawls 1999: 448)
> 
> 
> 



There is a tension, then, between the existence of the family and the
realization of equal prospects for all individuals in society. What is
more, as Rawls's remarks suggest, the tension does not seem to
be particular only to modes of family organization in present-day
societies but seems to pertain to any conceivable form of the family
(James Fishkin 1983: 48-49). This provokes the question of
whether the family is inconsistent with a defensible conception of
Equality of Opportunity and, if they are incompatible with one
another, how far, if at all, should the activities of the family be
circumscribed by the requirements of Equality of Opportunity (for an
argument that they are not *necessarily* incompatible, see
Arneson 2002 [2015]).



A number of considerations will have a bearing on the answer to that
question, including the kinds of values that the family embodies or
serves (for instance, manifesting intimate relationships and nurturing
responsible, conscientious future citizens), which kinds of activities
are integral to the family and its service of those values (for
instance, family members engaging in shared leisure and learning),
whether there are alternative sources of those values other than the
family as traditionally organized (such as, perhaps, state-run
collective child-rearing), how far the equality-disrupting effects of
the family can be mitigated by other social measures (for instance, by
compensation or affirmative action), and, of course, which factors can
justly affect differences in peoples' social prospects.



One thing worth noting here is that there are different ways of
conceiving of Equality of Opportunity in relation to such questions.
The first independently identifies which factors obstruct
persons' enjoyment of a fair chance--such as facing a less
nurturing family environment--and then considers how far such
unfairness should circumscribe the activities of the family and/or
commend other corrective social measures. On this approach, for
instance, one might conclude that differential family nurturing does
indeed disrupt Equality of Opportunity--because it undermines
fair life chances--but one might conclude that the values served
by the family justify tolerating some degree of loss of Equality of
Opportunity. The second involves specifying Equality of Opportunity
*after taking into account other values*, such as those served
by the family. On this approach, one might conclude that the nurturing
role played by the family is so fundamentally important that even
though it creates unequal prospects, those unequal prospects are a
price worth paying for a society organized around familial care. On
this second way of thinking about Equality of Opportunity, however,
those unequal prospects do not undermine Equality of Opportunity
precisely because they are justified by the value of an institution
such as the family. The former uses the label "Equality of
Opportunity" to pick out the *pro tanto* consideration of
unfairness involved in differential prospects, the latter uses the
label "Equality of Opportunity" to pick out the
"more-things-considered" conclusion about which
differential prospects remain unjustified by other values. The
difference between these two ways of thinking about Equality of
Opportunity is not necessarily substantive. Rather, they differ in
respect of the degree to which "Equality of Opportunity"
as an ideal takes into account values other than inequality in
prospects.



One account famous for its advocating the abolition of the family is
found in Plato's *Republic* (V 457). Even those who place
significant weight on a thick understanding of Equality of Opportunity
have tended to resist this conclusion, not necessarily because they
conclude that Equality of Opportunity can be entirely reconciled with
the existence of the family, but because the existence of the family
is often defended as indispensable for serving certain values.



An apparently straightforward reason to object to the abolition of the
family is that it would place constraints on the freedom and autonomy
of parents to raise children. Although it is widely accepted that
parental rights to rear children are limited by the interests of the
children within the family, for many parents raising children is an
important source of flourishing and the abolition of the family would
constitute a constraint on this. Indeed, whether or not child-rearing
is in fact a source of flourishing for any given potential parent, it
might still be thought to constrain a potential parent's
autonomy if the state were to prohibit that life-choice. One challenge
to such a parent-centred defence of the family and the parental rights
associated with it, draws attention to the difficulty of justifying
rights of control over others based on the controlling party's
own interests (Brighouse & Swift 2006: 82). Rather than justifying
the institution of the family on the grounds of parents'
interest, one might point to other interests at stake in the form of
the interests of children, or in the interests of third parties.



One such suggestion is that the family is more reliable at cultivating
certain capacities for flourishing in children than any alternative
social arrangement (Brennan & Noggle 1997; Munoz Darde
1999). There are a range of accounts here, but the basis of broad
alignment is that familial relationships are generally of important
service to children's interests, either in order to equip
children with the wide range of capacities necessary for healthy
development and self-determination (Munoz Darde 1999), or in
order to provide the preconditions for a flourishing childhood
(Brennan 2014). A child-centred account of this kind still seems to
need to explain why the family should not still be subject to
substantial constraints when such constraints are necessary to help
equip other children, outside the family, with such capacities. If
there are certain goods that can only be provided for children through
parental nurture within the family, what does this imply for broader
social obligations to ensure that all children enjoy relevantly equal
opportunities to enjoy those goods?



A further, compatible, claim is that the institution of the family can
be justified by its service to the interest of third parties. It is
sometimes argued that children are a type of public good (Folbre 1994;
2008; Olsaretti 2013) whose development as future citizens has
significant implications for the social order as a whole. In this
context, Jennifer Roback Morse (1999) argues, for instance, that the
family plays an indispensable role in raising persons capable of
trust, co-operation, and self-restraint. A well-functioning society
depends on sufficient numbers of citizens possessing such traits such
that they can engage in the forms of social co-operation necessary to
sustain collective self-governance.



Perhaps the most notable parent-centred account in recent years is
offered by Brighouse and Swift (2006), who argue that parents'
interests are served by certain control rights over children and that
those parental interests also permit certain forms of parental
partiality towards children which will naturally disrupt Equality of
Opportunity (2009). They argue that



> 
> 
> Parents enjoy a distinctively valuable relationship with their
> children; one that is intimate and mutually loving,
> 
> 
> 



and that



> 
> 
> the institution of the family allows [the parent] to have [this]
> relationship of a kind that cannot be substituted for by relationships
> with other adults. (Brighouse & Swift 2009: 53-54)
> 
> 
> 



In other words, the internal life of the family, along with shared
activities, experiences and even values between its members, support a
distinctive source of intimacy between parent and child which offers a
distinctive source of flourishing for parents. Other relationships are
not substitutable with those between parent child, so the abolition of
the family would mean that a particular, and valuable, source of
flourishing would be lost. In order to create, sustain, and enjoy
relationships of such value, parents need to be able to do things with
and for their children, and this will inevitably tend to create
differences between families, leading some children to benefit more
than others. Although this will almost certainly disrupt Equality of
Opportunity, Brighouse and Swift suggest that the value of these
intimate relationships is a potential justification for such
inequality. Some activities will be necessary to nourish these
relations of intimacy, whereas others will not. In the group of
activities that will be necessary, Brighouse and Swift (2009: 57) give
the examples of reading bedtime stories to children and parents
enrolling children in associations which will enable them to
participate in communities of value that can be shared between parent
and child. In contrast, it is very unlikely that enrolling children in
expensive private schools designed to maximize their future
opportunities, or investing in trust funds, will be essential for
parent and child to enjoy the goods distinctively supported by family
relationships (Brighouse & Swift 2009: 58). If those other
activities are to be justified, given the inequality they tend to
perpetuate, it must be on the basis of other values, rather than this
special familial intimacy.



In work that explores the societal factors which tend to result in
unequal life chances between different persons the family is
understandably foregrounded in discussion. This is because it is so
formative as a developmental pathway which has a bearing on the
prospects for acquiring the traits to be successful in social
competition (for a good analysis of the mechanisms by which families
transmit advantages see Swift 2005). At bottom, however, the conflict
is more general. For it seems that when persons exercise their
associational freedom in different ways this generates inequality. The
tension between the family and Equality of Opportunity reflects a more
general tension between freedom--to organize associations, to
favour some over others--and equality (James Fishkin 1987). The
tension manifests to different degrees and in different ways,
depending on the thickness of one's conception of Equality of
Opportunity, but it seems present to at least some degree for all
conceptions. For instance, the freedom to racially discriminate is
constrained by relatively thin, formal conceptions of Equality of
Opportunity. Meritocratic conceptions go further and constrain the
freedom to select on grounds other than the best qualified. More
substantive conceptions of Equality of Opportunity go still further,
and imply a tension between relevantly equal life chances and the
freedom to associate and promote the good of particular others, which
manifests different prospects between different persons.


## 8. Radical/Luck Egalitarian Equality of Opportunity



To this point, the entry has largely focused on the "societal
factors" which determine differential prospects for
success--whether in the form of legal constraints on
opportunities, discrimination in hiring, family background etc. The
range of conceptions of Equality of Opportunity canvassed to this
point tend mostly to take for granted that there are at least some
natural or non-societal factors that differentially affect
persons' prospects for success without undermining Equality of
Opportunity. Under FEO and associated conceptions of Equality of
Opportunity, for instance, it is acceptable for more talented people
to enjoy greater chances of success in social competition than those
who are less talented, provided those chances were not themselves
influenced in the wrong ways by social factors, such as class, family,
and perhaps other associational sources of inequality.



This position is challenged by a still thicker conception of Equality
of Opportunity, which might be termed Radical Equality of Opportunity
(Segall 2013; Swift 2014) and is often called Luck Egalitarianism (LE)
(also labelled "Socialist Equality of Opportunity" by
Cohen 2009). Roughly, under the LE conception of Equality of
Opportunity no factors other than persons' own responsible
choices should affect differential prospects for success (for some
prominent early defences see Cohen 1989; Temkin 1993). LE thereby goes
beyond FEO and not only condemns the influence of societal
inequalities but also differences in natural talent and ability.
Suppose, in a simplified case, that the highest paying jobs in a given
society select according to intellectual aptitude and that, even when
society is organized to a point where class, gender-based, racialized,
familial etc. inequalities do not affect persons' different
prospects for success, natural differences in persons'
intelligence determine who does or does not get the highest paying
jobs. Unequal prospects based upon those natural differences are
inconsistent with true Equality of Opportunity under the LE view,
because those with lower intelligence still have relevantly unequal
opportunities to succeed as compared with others.



For some, the intuitive appeal of the LE view is that differential
prospects for success should be relevantly under the control of each
individual. Echoing concerns first voiced by Rawls (1999: 87, 274,
447) in his *A Theory of Justice*, what drives the Luck
Egalitarian view is an objection to the distributive influence of
factors that are *arbitrary from a moral point of view* and, by
that token, unfair determinants of inequality. As such, only
differences that are the result of individuals' own responsible
choices (and, it is claimed, therefore *non*-arbitrary) create
fair inequalities in success. The range of factors that are
unacceptable determinants of differential success under the LE is
therefore broader than under thinner conceptions of Equality of
Opportunity and excludes everything other than *the results of
one's own choices*. The details of the LE version of
Equality of Opportunity will be further unpacked in what follows, but
it is worth noting that the LE view tends to differ from FEO and other
thinner conceptions of Equality of Opportunity in other respects as
well. Many of the conceptions of Equality of Opportunity surveyed
above have a relatively limited scope inasmuch as they are concerned
with opportunities *for certain goods*, often in the context of
competition--usually socially advantageous positions of certain
kinds, like jobs, offices, places in education. LE tends to be
understood more broadly--as a view about overall fairness of
persons' life prospects (Segall 2013). It is therefore concerned
with persons' opportunities in general with respect to whatever
has value in life--what has become known as the
"currency" of egalitarian concern. Broadly, the LE view
holds that if someone is worse off than others, in terms of the
overall "currency" of what matters, because of factors
other than their own choices, then this is an unfair violation of
Equality of Opportunity. The LE view is therefore consistent with
persons facing unequal opportunities to obtain *particular jobs or
roles*, provided persons enjoy equal overall prospects for
success, measured in whatever "currency" is favoured. The
LE view also naturally tends towards a global application in a way
that distinguishes it from some of the other conceptions. Thinner
conceptions of Equality of Opportunity are frequently consistent with
criteria for success which exclude or disadvantage people on the basis
of their nationality or geographical proximity. For instance,
university admissions may give priority to domestic applicants or even
exclude foreign students from eligibility altogether. Certain jobs
will require candidates to travel for interview and relocate in the
event that they are successful, which will effectively exclude many
people from being able to compete for or accept the role. These
constraints will often pass as acceptable under conceptions of
Equality of Opportunity surveyed in the above, but for the LE view
they are just another potential source of inequality which may stand
in the way of realizing Equality of Opportunity (for more see
 section 10.2).



LE lies near the thickest end of the continuum by which we can
organize various conceptions of Equality of Opportunity. It holds that
only choice is an appropriate source of unequal prospects for success.
A still thicker conception might deny that even choice should
determine differences, and, instead, that *no* factors are
acceptable determinants of unequal success (for a qualified version of
such a view see Persson 2007). This would amount to Equality of
Opportunity as equal outcome. Whether or not this is a justified
position, it might be strained to label this an Equal
*Opportunity* view. Although LE occupies this place on the
continuum of conceptions, where few factors are acceptable
determinants of unequal prospects, it is misleading to think of LE as
commending equal *chances* for success. Equal chances of
success could be secured by simply having an equal lottery between
everyone, the outcome of which results in some people faring very well
and others faring very poorly. This would be straightforwardly
inconsistent with LE, because the inequalities would not be a result
of persons' own choices but, rather, the outcome of the lottery
(for an example of this type see B. Barry 1988)



At the heart of LE is the distinction, first introduced by Ronald
Dworkin, between "option luck" and "brute
luck". Option luck is



> 
> 
> a matter of how deliberate and calculated gambles turn
> out--whether someone gains or loses through accepting an isolated
> risk he or she should have anticipated and might have declined.
> (Dworkin 1981: 293)
> 
> 
> 



Brute luck is defined in contradistinction to option luck as "a
matter of how risks fall out that are not in that sense deliberate
gambles" (1981: 293). To illustrate the distinction, Dworkin
continues:



> 
> 
> If I buy a stock on the exchange that rise, then my option luck is
> good. If I am hit by a falling meteorite whose course could not have
> been predicted, then my bad luck is brute. (1981: 293)
> 
> 
> 



Roughly, then, brute luck is a matter of things that happen to us
which are relevantly independent of our choices, including both things
that happen to us over the course of our lives and things which we are
born with, whereas option luck is a matter of the reasonably
foreseeable consequences for us of the choices we could reasonably
have avoided making. For LE, inequalities in brute luck are unfair and
unjust, whereas inequalities in option luck are fair and just. Persons
therefore enjoy Equality of Opportunity in the relevant way when their
brute luck is equal with others and outcomes differ only as a result
of differences in option luck--namely the foreseeable outcomes of
their own responsible choices. These essentials of the LE view have
been further refined in various work, and the LE view has generated
substantial debate (for some critical views see Anderson 1999;
Fleurbaey 2001; Scheffler 2003; 2005; Seligman 2007; for some
defences, see Arneson 2004; N. Barry 2006; Elford 2017; Knight 2005;
Lippert-Rasmussen 2016; Segall 2007; Stemplowska 2013; Voigt
2007).



Beyond matters of substantive debate between critics and defenders of
LE, there are various complexities pertaining to the application of
the LE view. One is that persons' choices are generally, if not
always, made in the context of pre-existing unfair inequality. Suppose
we have two young people--Sydney and Miriam--who face a
choice between going to university to acquire new skills or working a
low paying job. The outcome of that choice will affect their prospects
for success in applications for high paying jobs in the future, and
the earnings from those jobs will far exceed what they are able to
earn in a low paying job, even when they take up that low paid work
immediately. Sydney enjoys the good brute luck of having been born
into a rich family, which can help pay for her university fees and are
not themselves suffering from any financial hardship. Miriam, on the
other hand, is from a poor family, which does not have the means to
help her financially through university and struggles to pay domestic
bills. Suppose Sydney opts to go to university, Miriam chooses to take
a low paying job, and as a result Sydney enjoys far better prospects
in the competition for higher paying jobs. Although the differences in
advantage between Sydney and Miriam were partly the result of their
respective choices (and, to that extent, constitute option luck),
those choices were made in the context of considerably different
circumstances, which themselves represent unfair brute luck
differences between the two (see Swift 2008: 364 for a note on how
critics of LE have sometimes overlooked this important qualifier).
This brief illustration indicates that the question of how far persons
should be held liable for option luck disadvantage (or entitled to
option luck advantage) under conditions of unequal brute luck is a
profoundly difficult one. To add to the complexity, choices may not
only be influenced in the sense that they are taken in the context of
a certain range of options, which may differ, unfairly, for different
persons, but persons' choices are themselves informed by
different dispositions, inclinations, and knowledge bases which
themselves depend partly on brute factors (Voorhoeve 2008). How much
effort a person is inclined to make, which options they view as being
viable or valuable, and how focused different persons become on tasks
are all things which differ across persons and may be affected, to one
degree or another, by brute luck factors such as a person's
social circumstances or their genetic predisposition to think in
certain ways. Again, the question of how to disentangle brute from
option luck considerations looks immensely challenging.



Still further, circumstances constrain which options are
*reasonable* for people to pursue and to that extent might
affect which choices qualify as "deliberate gambles" in
Dworkin's sense. Suppose, in the example above, that Miriam has
a gravely ill mother who urgently needs expensive medication that she
can only get if Miriam immediately begins earning money in whichever
job is available. It is plausible to think that going to university,
rather than earning immediate money, is simply an unreasonable option
for Miriam, given what it would mean for her mother's health.
For this reason, one might argue that Miriam's resulting
disadvantage in the future employment stakes is more brute luck than
option luck, even though it issued from a choice she made (for
analysis of a similar case, see de Shalit and Wolff 2011).



The most well-developed theory attempting to grapple with some of the
challenges of this sort is offered by John Roemer (1998; 2002; 2003).
Roemer starts from the perspective that there are aspects of a
person's environment which are relevantly beyond that
person's control--their
"circumstances"--which can be distinguished from a
person's acts of autonomous volition--their
"effort". Roemer offers a proposal designed to help
policymakers determine the extent to which persons' outcomes are
a result of their circumstances or their efforts. That proposal
involves sorting people into "types" based on how
advantageous their circumstances are. Distributive differences within
each types reflect the differential "effort" individuals
make. Equality of Opportunity requires equalizing *between*
types (given that the difference between types is based on
"circumstances"--factors outside of
individuals' control in the relevant sense) but not equalizing
to eliminate differences in individuals' place *within*
types (given that such differences are based on "effort").
To crudely illustrate, suppose we have an "advantaged"
type (e.g., from a rich background) and a "disadvantaged"
type (e.g., from a poor background), and within each type we have
"low effort" and "high effort" groups.
Roemer's proposal involves equalizing between "high
effort" "advantaged" and "high effort"
"disadvantaged" individuals and also equalizing between
"low effort" "advantaged" and "low
effort" "disadvantaged" individuals but does not
require further equalization between "high effort" and
"low effort" (for critiques see Hurley 2003: ch. 7;
Phillips 2006: 20-23; Risse 2002).



Although the LE conception of Equality of Opportunity has classically
involved a view of option luck which appears to take for granted
Dworkin's original way of specifying the idea, this aspect of LE
has been scrutinized and developed in other work (Arneson 2004; Dekker
2009; Elford 2018; Olsaretti 2009; Stemplowska 2009; Temkin 2011).
Suppose Taylor chooses to stay at home and take care of her two
children and that this leaves her worse off than she would have been
by going out to work a full-time job. Assuming her choice was
relevantly unconstrained by those circumstances, her being worse off
looks like a matter of option luck. She made a choice and should be
held liable for its foreseeable consequences. LE views have often
implicitly supposed that it is the actual foreseeable consequences of
choice, or the consequences determined by the uncoerced responses from
others (for instance through the free market) which ought to determine
the consequences. But this might be questioned, as the basic
distinction between choices and circumstances at the root of LE is, in
fact, consistent with a range of different views regarding the
consequences that persons should be held liable for/entitled to as a
result of their choices (Arneson 2004; Olsaretti 2009; Stemplowska
2009). Perhaps care-giving choices should be rewarded more highly than
the market rewards them, and perhaps more highly than the other
vocations. One could argue for this conclusion on various grounds
(Olsaretti 2009: 182-186). Perhaps it would be valuable to
incentivize care-giving choices in a way that the market presently
fails to do, or, for a different reason, because there is something
basically valuable about care-giving that means such choices are
deserving of reward (Temkin 2011). The point is that the Equality of
Opportunity aspect of LE--that persons should only fare better or
worse than others as a result of their own *choices*--is
consistent with a range of accounts concerning which benefits or
liabilities ought to pertain to different choices.



The LE position has engendered a substantial amount of debate since
its inception. Some lines of criticism point to its putatively
implausible implications for policymaking (Wolff 1998).However, the LE
conception of Equality of Opportunity is an abstract, ideal conception
which few, if any, of its advocates believe can be perfectly
instantiated (Arneson 2004: 13-14). Almost all those who hold an
LE conception also tend to view it as one consideration of justice, to
be considered against other values. LE is a view concerning which
inequalities are fair, even if unfair inequalities can be justified on
other grounds. For instance, just as with FEO, LE fairness is in
tension with the family inasmuch as the existence of the family
generates brute luck inequalities between different children. It is
consistent with LE to hold that the family is an all-things-considered
justified and valuable social mode of organization, whilst contending
that it standardly generates lamentable, unfair inequalities which we
have reason to mitigate.



There are different approaches to the inequalities that *are*
justified under the LE view. LE is sometimes understood as a view
which *merely permits* those inequalities, such that the
elimination of those inequalities would not be bad. This LE conception
of Equality of Opportunity would be consistent with redistributive
measures to create equal outcomes, even if it would not
*mandate* the elimination of option luck inequality (Segall
2013). Alternatively, LE is sometimes understood as a view that
*requires* option luck inequalities, under which redistribution
to eliminate option luck inequalities would be positively unfair
(Cohen 2006: 444), even if that might be justified by other values.
Understood in this way, LE shares with the meritocratic conception the
notion that some differences in prospects are *required* (the
more qualified *should be* advantaged in the competition),
rather than merely permitted.


## 9. Equality of Opportunity in Practice



In
 section 2,
 we saw that Equality of Opportunity can be understood in deontic or
telic terms. To recall, a deontic view of Equality of Opportunity is
primarily concerned with processes and decisions by which goods or
positions are allocated, whereas a telic view is concerned with
persons' enjoyment of equal opportunities as a matter of the
overall state of affairs. Rawls' conception of FEO, for example,
explicitly combines both deontic and telic elements. It includes a
deontic requirement that offices and positions are to be distributed
according to the talents and willingness to work of those competing
for such positions (a meritocratic conception, or, as Rawls calls it,
formal equality of opportunity), and it includes a telic principle
that persons ought to enjoy conditions which provide them with a fair
chance to compete under those terms. LE is most naturally understood
as a telic ideal, given that it evaluates how a person fares overall
in comparison with others. It is possible to conceive of LE as a
deontic approach, however. Such an approach might specify allocative
requirements as being those which, if adhered to, would best
instantiate LE outcomes (Segall 2013). Even so, because LE is
concerned with persons' levels of overall advantage, any
principles regulating the allocation of jobs and positions
specifically would either be insufficient to ensure LE Equality of
Opportunity (because only jobs and positions, along with their
attendant rewards, would be allocated), or they would need to take
into account wider sources of inequality.



This points us in the direction of a tension between telic and deontic
considerations of Equality of Opportunity. To take Rawls' FEO as
an illustration, we can see that the deontic element--that
offices and positions should be allocated according to meritocratic
principles--is separable from the telic element--that
persons should enjoy a fair chance to compete for social advantages.
These elements can come apart in different ways. A society could offer
an equal chance for social advantage whilst violating the meritocratic
principle. Suppose we have a society sharply divided along racialized
lines but in a way that is equal between groups. Members of each
racialized group are systematically discriminated against in hiring
practices, but this balances out overall to give each citizen no
lesser chance than others at competing for social advantage. Though
fanciful, this illustrates how meritocratic considerations are
importantly distinct from, and only contingently related to, the issue
of equal prospects for success overall. If we object to the racialized
discrimination in a case like this, it suggests that our reasons for
objecting to it are not reducible to its liability to create
inequalities in life chances (though we may not be objecting to it
*qua* being discrimination; Segall 2013: 122). More
realistically, a society could instantiate meritocratic hiring
practices without giving citizens a relevantly fair chance to
compete.



This second scenario provokes a further important question: namely,
how should deontic principles of Equality of Opportunity be applied in
contexts where telic Equality of Opportunity is imperfectly
instantiated? (For some reflections, see Joseph Fishkin 2014:
56-65.) For instance, when society fails to ensure that persons
have a fair chance to compete for offices and positions, should hiring
practices be adjusted in light of this, or not (Clayton 2012)? Suppose
society manifests substantial class inequality which leads to
systematic differences between children from the prosperous class and
a poor class when it comes to their prospects of success in an
employment market that is regulated by meritocratic principles.
Children from the prosperous class have a much greater chance at
obtaining the qualifications that will help secure them the advantaged
positions. Suppose that those inequalities remain unaddressed by
direct means (for instance, the redistribution of wealth or education
reforms).



One measure here would be to institute workplace adaptations to offset
disadvantages. That is, the available range of jobs could be
reconstituted to ensure that advantaged positions depend less on the
talents that are cultivated by the prosperous social class and depend
on traits that are more evenly distributed across the social spectrum.
This would be consistent with adhering to principles of meritocratic
Equality of Opportunity. Competitive hiring would still be decided by
a "best qualified" criteria, but the range of relevant
qualifications is simply changed to counter unfair inequalities in
access to the jobs. This measure might seem to have limited mileage,
however (although for a related proposal in a sporting context, albeit
in response to natural physiological differences, see English 1978).
Quite apart from the fact that there might be reasons of efficiency
for organizing the workplace in certain ways rather than others, it is
also likely that the sources of social inequality in a society divided
along class lines would be responsive to changes in how the workplace
is organized. If families in prosperous social classes are intent on
funnelling resources into their children's development to give
them the highest chances of success, their money will simply follow
whichever set of qualifications happen to do that.



Sometimes social advantage can allow people to gain qualifications
which advantage them in competitive applications, even though those
qualifications are not necessarily reflective of higher underlying
talent or ability. For a stark illustration of this, suppose that
children of wealthy families can gain preferential access to
prestigious and high calibre universities, and that, whilst there,
they are given lenient grading given the quality of their work. They
reach the job market with exceptionally strong qualifications--in
the sense that their educational portfolio is strong--even though
this is not an accurate reflection of their underlying ability. In the
context of advantages of this kind--where social advantage buys
"surface qualifications", rather than enhancing
"talent for the job"--it might be that some degree of
unfair inequality in the competition for social advantage can be
offset by ensuring that hiring and admissions practices consistently
admit those with the highest underlying ability (and effort), rather
than those who have the best "surface qualifications".



An example may help to illustrate. Take a competitive application for
a degree course in mathematics. Suppose the criteria for being
"best qualified" for selection is the level of aptitude at
maths that the student will reach at the end of the course. The
university begins with a selection procedure that uses school grades
as the sole appropriate indicator as to which candidate is best
qualified in that sense. It might be that school grades are an
imperfect indicator because less well-qualified students from more
prosperous backgrounds are able to go to schools which successfully
allow them to get high grades, even though this does not necessarily
reflect their superior underlying ability in maths. One measure the
university might take to apply the "best qualified"
criteria more accurately, then, might be to design a maths test which
more accurately discriminates between candidates based on underlying
ability than school grades do.



This would not necessarily be a compromise of the meritocratic
conception of Equality of Opportunity, but a requirement to apply it
more accurately. For instance, it could be that using "surface
qualifications" is a useful proxy for identifying underlying
ability and is otherwise more efficient than implementing a more
accurate, but also more costly, procedure. Offsetting this source of
unequal chances may involve requiring institutions like firms and
universities to invest additional resources in more accurate
procedures.



Alternatively, it might be argued that to counter the lack of equal
chances for members of socially disadvantaged groups, we should depart
from meritocratic principles in hiring and admissions. For instance, a
quota system might be used to require the inclusion of members of
certain disadvantaged groups, even though they may be less qualified
than non-members (Mason 2006: 19, 78 ; Mason 2001: 767).This is
importantly different from the above thought that measures might be
taken to discount the social advantages that some have when it comes
to portraying themselves as ultimately best qualified. It is not
simply a matter of eliminating the social advantages some candidates
have concerning how successfully they can navigate the competitive
procedures (for instance, through better qualifications on paper) but
it is a matter of saying that members of certain groups should get an
advantage over those who are in fact better qualified for the
position. In the case of applications to study maths at university,
for instance, it could be that children from more prosperous
backgrounds receive an education that not only gives them better
grades, but it also genuinely enhances their ability at maths. In this
case they are genuinely better qualified in the relevant sense, rather
than simply appearing to be, but their educational advantages could be
said to give them an unfair chance in the competition to study maths
at university. A quota system requiring that a greater proportion of
students be admitted from less prosperous backgrounds would thereby
involve compromising the deontic, meritocratic element of FEO in order
to better satisfy the telic, fair chances element.



A quota system of this kind might fall under the umbrella of measures
often referred to as "affirmative action" or
"positive discrimination", under which members of some
groups receive preferential treatment in the competition for roles and
positions in a way that departs from meritocratic criteria (see the
entry on
 affirmative action).
 This need not necessarily come in the form of a quota but could be
simply that membership of a certain group gives a candidate some
advantage in the competition, say, by simply giving some extra weight
to those applications (Dworkin 2002b; Jacobs 2004: ch. 5). There are a
range of reasons offered for pursuing such measures. The measures
could be pursued to make the competition for scarce roles and
positions fairer, as in the above example of admitting a greater
proportion of children from less prosperous backgrounds to a maths
course. They could be pursued as a matter of compensation for
historical disadvantage (Nickel 1972; Thomson 1973; Valls 1999; for
criticism, see Anderson 2010: 137-141; Lippert-Rasmussen 2020:
ch. 2; Sher 1975). The measures could be pursued to try to counteract
would-be unfair inequalities more generally, and not specifically to
equalize chances for the members of the group who are being favoured.
For instance, it might be argued that by bolstering the numbers of
individuals from disadvantaged or marginalized groups in certain roles
or jobs, this helps to facilitate access to those positions more
generally, or to work against broader forms of injustice. Perhaps
admitting a larger proportion of children from underprivileged social
backgrounds into university helps encourage members of those groups to
see university as a realistic ambition when, because of past social
conditions, it has not been considered attainable from their point of
view (for discussion, see Thomson 1973: 367). Or perhaps increasing
the numbers of members of racialized minority groups in a workforce
will play some part in broader efforts to destigmatize racialized
differences between groups. One thing worth noting about this
rationale is that on a broad enough understanding of what makes
someone "best qualified" for a role it might be that such
measures do not constitute a compromise of the meritocratic
requirement to select the best qualified after all (Anderson 2010: ch.
7; Dworkin 2002a: 109). This might be the case if the relevant purpose
of the role included these broader social effects.


## 10. The Scope of Equality of Opportunity



Different conceptions of Equality of Opportunity tend to be aligned
with different views about what might be called the
"scope" of Equality of Opportunity. There are two
dimensions of the scope of Equality of Opportunity which might be
helpfully distinguished. First, there is the matter of the range of
goods or positions that considerations of Equality of Opportunity are
relevant for. Narrower views of the scope of Equality of Opportunity
restrict its application to a limited range of offices and positions
allocated through a competitive process. Wider views of the scope
might encompass a broader range of positions, goods, and
relationships. Call this the "goods scope" of Equality of
Opportunity. Second, there is the matter of the range of persons
deemed relevant for Equality of Opportunity. Suppose it is claimed
that French society offers Equality of Opportunity for holding
political office, in the sense that there are no formal or informal
constraints of relevance which stand between any French citizen and
seeking to hold such office. Still, it might be that only French
citizens are eligible to run for political office, so the scope of
application of Equality of Opportunity is limited to French citizens.
Call this the "person scope" of Equality of
Opportunity.


### 10.1 Goods Scope of Equality of Opportunity



As much of the preceding material indicates, it is familiar to think
of the application of Equality in relation to socially advantageous
roles and positions involving a competitive application process, the
paradigm of such cases being jobs and competitive admissions processes
in education. We could think about this in terms of persons enjoying
Equality of Opportunity for particular roles (for example, for a given
teaching job) or for a type of role (for example, for teaching jobs in
general), or for roles more generally (for example, jobs in general).
Equality of Opportunity is also sometimes used to refer to
persons' access to goods other than socially advantageous roles
such as healthcare. One example of healthcare concerns that might be
framed in terms of Equality of Opportunity is the matter of the
so-called "postcode lottery" in the UK. This refers to the
fact that where one lives in the UK can sometimes determine how
readily available certain drugs and treatments are under the National
Health Service. If citizens in one county have access to drugs that
are far less available through the service to citizens in another
county, this might be framed as a failure of Equality of Opportunity
for healthcare. Similar claims might be made about the distribution of
many other goods like this, which do not take the form of competition
for roles and positions, but which involve the distribution of scarce
resources according to a given eligibility criteria. When people claim
that there is a failure of Equality of Opportunity, they may not be
claiming that everyone should have equal amounts of the good, or even
equal access to the good, but that the distribution ought to be
determined by justified criteria of eligibility, rather than by other
factors which are deemed illegitimate. So, for instance, in the
postcode lottery case, the claim might be that healthcare should be
distributed according to *need*, rather than according to the
arbitrary fact of which county one happens to live in. As such, even
though this application of the notion of Equality of Opportunity
pertains to goods other than competitive application practices, it
involves the same idea--that some factors are legitimate
determinants of the distribution and others are not.



Whilst Equality of Opportunity is very commonly understood to have a
scope that encompasses socially advantageous positions that are part
of formalized institutions--such as jobs and other institutional
roles, and places in education--it might also be understood more
broadly, to encompass more informal "positions" in society
which have value or constitute social advantages, including, for
instance, to competitions for prizes and honours. Still more broadly,
the notion of Equality of Opportunity might be applied to much less
formalized social relations that constitute, or lead to, advantages.
It might be applied, for instance, to one's opportunity to be a
parent, or even one's opportunity for marriage. Again, the
notion of Equality of Opportunity here can be used in a way that ties
it closely to the institutional or political measures that might be
taken to ensure fair access to certain goods or relationships, or it
might be applied more broadly to take account of the wider social
explanation for some persons enjoying a good where others do not. For
instance, some conceptions of Equality of Opportunity for parenthood
or for marriage will hold that persons enjoy equal opportunities when
there are no state-instituted barriers against certain persons
marrying or, say, adopting children. Other conceptions will go
further, and contend that Equality of Opportunity requires, for
instance, subsidizing IVF treatment and adoption processes, or
widening access to marriage procedures. And, indeed, there will be
some conceptions which go still further and hold that social norms and
the behaviour of one's fellow citizens can themselves prove
barriers to Equality of Opportunity. To illustrate, suppose we can
clearly identify a level of bias against certain members of a
particular racialized group in dating apps, leading to those
persons' faring less well at matching with others. It might be
argued that this reflects a lack of Equality of Opportunity for such
individuals to form romantic relationships.


### 10.2 Person Scope of Equality of Opportunity



This dimension of the scope of Equality of Opportunity has thus far
been framed as a matter of the range of persons to whom the conception
of Equality of Opportunity is to be applied. However, it is worth
noting that we can think about this issue in slightly different
terms--understanding the identity or status of the person as one
of the factors which should or should not affect a distribution. The
example of Equality of Opportunity for political office in France can
be understood as having a scope that is limited to French citizens,
or, alternatively, it could be understood to have a global scope but
where citizenship is a relevant factor which determines who should or
should not be able to run for office. Though it is true on a technical
level that all such scope claims can be translated into the factors
which should or should not affect success in a competition, it seems
clearer to conceive of this in terms of the scope of application
across persons, given that it is a persons' *identity*
which *disbars them from consideration altogether.*



Furthermore, particularly when we think about telic ways of thinking
about Equality of Opportunity in terms of persons enjoying fair
prospects for success, it seems more sensible to think of conceptions
of Equality of Opportunity in terms of being scope limited across
persons, rather than adding a person's identity to the range of
factors which legitimately affect the prospects for success. Consider,
for instance, the claim under Rawls' FEO that social class
should not affect persons' prospects for securing socially
advantageous positions. It seems clear that children in the poorest
social class in, say, Afghanistan will have worse prospects for
success than the most prosperous social class in, say, Norway. And yet
Rawls does not class it as a failure of Equality of Opportunity if
Afghan children fare worse in the competition for offices and
positions in Norway than do Norwegian children. Rather than saying
that FEO has global scope but also includes the condition that
prospects *can legitimately vary according to nationality*, it
seems more sensible to say that Rawls' conception of FEO is
limited in scope to those persons within a particular social
scheme.

 

Whether Equality of Opportunity has a scope that traverses national
borders is closely related to wider questions concerning the scope of
justice (see the entries on
 global justice
 and
 international distributive justice)
 and is a debated matter (for defences of such a position, see Caney
2000a,b; B. Barry 1991; Moellendorf 2002; Pogge 1994; for accounts
critical of coherent global scheme of Equality of Opportunity, see
Boxill 1987; Miller 2005). There is no strict relationship between how
formal or substantive a conception of Equality of Opportunity is and
how wide its person scope is. LE conceptions of Equality of
Opportunity tend to be associated with a global person scope, although
LE is technically consistent with a more limited person scope. LE
tilts in favour of a global person scope because conceptions of LE
generally see all factors other than responsible
choice--including citizenship and nationality--as morally
arbitrary, and hence improper determinants of how well a person fares
in comparison with others (Caney 2005: 123).


## 11. Concluding remarks



The term Equality of Opportunity is really used to refer to several
distinct ideas, thematically unified by some form of commitment to
permitting differential access to goods or positions based on certain
factors and condemning it in relation to others. The thinness of that
basis of unity helps to illuminate the apparent widespread (although
not by any means universal) agreement over the value of Equality of
Opportunity. It also serves to expose the sense in which that degree
of agreement is ultimately illusory, and that surface agreement
concerning the value of Equality of Opportunity can often conceal
underlying substantive disagreement over the respects in which
individuals ought to be made equal with one another.