Whats Wrong with Inequality? Anderson/Gutting interview

Amanda Gardner

            Gary Gutting conducted a very compelling interview with Elizabeth Anderson, a professor of philosophy and women gender studies at The University of Michigan, about the overall issue of inequality.  A quote in this article I found particularly important is “discrimination/ differential treatment idea only captures a small part of what counts as unjust inequality.”  These few simple words, opened my eyes and allowed me to understand and view the issues of inequality in a different perspective.  Its very easy to look at a woman getting 79 cents for every dollar a man makes and get angry, or look at the issues of racial discrimination in our country and shake your head, but Elizabeth Anderson digs deeper and describes the issues of inequality that we don’t often think about.

During this interview she talks about examples that had never even crossed my mind, such as the inequality of fraternization after office hours such as socializing at bars.  There may be women that cannot attend events like this and because of that miss out on networking and  getting promotions.  The significance of this quote is mainly the idea that there is a lot of issues that people neglect to see, and fight against that are still equally as important of issues.  The inequality America faces with our economy is another issue Anderson brought up that I thought was incredibly interesting.  She described this as the “inequality in material goods.”  More specifically, she claims that an important source of injustice is how our government does not insure people against poverty, disability, illness and unemployment.  Although I was first caught off guard and disagreed with this, but after looking deeper and reading farther into the facts she claims, such as the study that cash transfers to the poor have been found to be hugely successful in promoting productivity.  These transfers have been done in places such as Brazil, Kenya, and even North Carolina.  Anderson states that those in poverty who received this used it to improve their parenting, advance their children’s educations and invest in healthier foods.  Anderson says that “eliminating poverty is now the key to achieving racial and gender equality.” This is true to a certain extent, but there are a lot of other inequalities that don’t relate to one’s economic status.  Sometimes bosses fire their employees for their political views and sexual orientation, or a college student gets sexually assaulted because she is a woman.  There are a variety of injustices society deals with, and until we face every single one head on and understand that there is a problem, we as a society, country, and world can never change.  People are afraid of the truth because of the stigma that comes with words such as “activists” and “feminism.”  Someone who believes that that the economy should include taxing the rich more than those living in poverty, and spread the wealth are labeled as liberal tree huggers.  If we always place these labels on those trying to fix the injustices, we will be in a constant stand still.  Elizabeth Anderson does an incredible job of getting her point across that discrimination is just a small part of the inequality our society faces.