Equal opportunity

Equal opportunity is a descriptive term for an approach intended to provide a certain social environment in which people are not excluded from the activities of society, such as education, employment, or health care, on the basis of immutable traits. Equal opportunity practices include measures taken by organizations to ensure fairness in the employment process.

In job advertisements and descriptions, the fact that the employer is an equal opportunity employer is sometimes indicated by the abbreviations EOE or MFDV which stands for Male, Female, Disabled, Veteran.

Equal Opportunity is often considered separate from basic Freedoms. For example, Freedom of Speech is usually not within the realm of Equal Opportunity but rather within basic rights. Equal Opportunity consists of additional elements crucial to a meritocracy, such as:

In practice, methods for fulfilling equal opportunity can be less than complete or ineffective. Indeed, the means by which to measure the success or failure of equal opportunity policies is unclear. Opportunity itself is often difficult - if not impossible - to accurately measure. Thus, in practice, equal opportunity is said to exist when people with similar abilities reach similar results (equality of outcome) after doing a similar amount of work. Indeed, equal opportunity and equality of outcome are often seen as complementary. Other societal traditions interfere with equality of opportunity, however; for example, as long as wealth, and thus opportunities, can be passed from one generation to another through inheritance, it is unclear how equality of outcome would come about for two children of similar ability, one born into the elite class and one born into the middle or lower class.