Social Equality

Social equality is a social state of affairs in which certain different people have the same status in a certain respect, at the very least in voting rights, freedom of speech and assembly, and the extent of property rights.

There are different forms of equality, depending on the persons and social situations in question. For example, one may consider equality of the sexes in opportunities for employment; the people in question are men and women (contrasted) and the social situation is the search for a job. As another example, equal opportunity refers to the idea that all people should start out in life from the same platform (i.e. all should have equal opportunities in life, regardless of where they were born or who their parents were). A fight for social and legal equality was seen during the sixties in the United States in the Civil Rights Movement.

Equalism is a name often given to forms of egalitarianism (advocacy of equality) concerned with issues of gender or race. Thus, equalism is another name for gender egalitarianism, sexual egalitarianism and/or racial egalitarianism.

The term is used by people of many disjointed political philosophies developed separately by political activists. This includes people who support gender-blind policies in response to the failings they saw in certain branches of Feminism, as well as people who support colour-blind policies in response to what they see as the discriminatory elements of Affirmative Action.

Central to equalism is the belief that society must be colour-blind and sex/gender-blind.

Gender Equality

Equalists generally believe that most branches of feminism have abandoned notions of equality, and instead focuses only on females's rights, to the exclusion of the rights of other sexes/genders. Equalists seek to promote the rights of females, males, and everything in between.

"Gender equity", "gender equality", "sexual equality", or gender egalitarianism is the belief in the equality of the gender or the sexes. Many followers of this philosophy would like to see this term come to replace “feminism” or “masculism,” when used to describe a belief in basic equal rights and opportunities for members of both sexes within legal, social, or corporate establishments. They strive for ultimate fairness, and seek cooperative solutions so as to make things better for both males, females and everything in between. While they may share a number of critiques and analyses with self-described feminists and/or masculists, they feel that “egalitarianism” is a better word for a belief in equality than any word that focuses on one of the genders.

Racial Equality

Equalists often differ with mainstream leftists in condemning alleged discriminatory elements of Affirmative Action(or Positive Discrimination) as well as elements of Substantial Equality aiming at equality of outcome.