Democratic Equality

Abstract

Most academic institutions in liberal democratic societies aim toward equality and justice and share the aim that people’s prospects for an academic career should not be affected by factors such as gender, socioeconomic background, ethnicity or race. At the same time, these are precisely the kinds of factors that affect people’s opportunities. Among other things, equality concerns the distribution of resources such as time and money, and/or individuals’ and groups’ statuses as equal in social and political relations. The claim in this chapter is that justice involves both redistribution and status equality, but that the principle of democratic equality, which is a relational conception of equality, is needed in order to counteract structural injustice.