Equity and equality: What’s the difference?

When discussing gender equity in the workplace, it’s important to recognise that this is different from gender equality.

Equality means everyone is given the same opportunity. However, equity considers the factors that disadvantage some people and is the process towards achieving equality.

“Equality is when everybody receives the same thing. Most of the time, this is what you’re going to be thinking of when a sibling is mad that another sibling got something that they didn’t get; they want the exact same amount of ice cream,” explained Dr Debbie Devis, research assistant at the University of South Australia.

“Equity is looking at people’s circumstances and making sure that people who have barriers, specific barriers compared to other people, have ways to overcome those barriers.”

“The easy metaphor that people use from a visual point of view is a really short person trying to look over the fence compared to a tall person. You don’t need to give both of those people a box. You need to give the short person a box to look over the fence. That’s equity,” she said.

Understanding that women experience unique barriers is important as it helps to better strive towards achieving true equality. Employers should be mindful of this when implementing gendered policies.

Dr Devis continued: “We’re not trying to take anything away from men because, obviously, that is unfair, but giving women the exact same things we give men is not actually solving the problem of the barriers that they face.”

Unfortunately, Dr Devis is no stranger to these challenges. Coming from a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) background, she was pushed out of this work due to unfair stereotypes and biases.

“I went into STEM very early on as a bright-eyed undergraduate, thinking that I could change the world of biology with my intellectual prowess. But throughout my time as a PhD student, I was studying in a molecular genetics lab, and I found that there were just all these small things that kept being added onto my personal workload that my male counterparts weren’t receiving,” Dr Devis outlined.

“Midway through my PhD, our lab manager retired, and instead of hiring someone new, they made me do it on top of all my extra work. And when I said, ‘OK, this is unfair. I’m essentially doing two full-time jobs now. Can we please share the load? Can some of the other people do it?’ The response that I was given was, ‘Yeah, but you’re a woman and you’re more organised, and therefore, you’re better at this.’”

“I remember thinking that was extremely unfair because it was already quite hard for me to be taken seriously when I would go to conferences or if I was doing a talk or even if I was just out and about in the world, talking about science, which by that time I was an expert in.”

These negative opinions left Dr Devis alienated and dissatisfied with the STEM field. Employers should recognise these challenges if they’re to keep women happy and engaged in their roles.

While it’s important for workplaces to recognise these challenges, individuals can do their part too.

“The thing that helped me personally the most, and I think this will help most other women as well, is having a really robust network of peers who can support you,” Dr Devis said.

“Sometimes just knowing that somebody else is experiencing the same thing as you helps you to realise that it’s a complex systemic problem as opposed to you are just bad. And that is a sad reality of a lot of women going through this kind of thing because they have major impostor syndrome, thinking that they’re not good enough and everything that they’re struggling with is because of a personal failure when really it’s just a systemic issue about biases and stereotypes that we hold against women.”

The transcript of this podcast episode, when quoted above, was slightly edited for publishing purposes. The full audio conversation with Dr Debbie Devis on 30 May is below, and the original podcast article can be found here.