importance of diversity in that diVerent people will need diVerent amounts
and kinds of goods to reach the same levels of well-being. Social diversity
means that the conversion of resources into opportunities will vary from
person to person: some people will need more than others to achieve the
same capabilities. DiVerences in age, gender, disability, and so on can mean
that two people with the same ‘‘commodity bundle’’ will have divergent
opportunities regarding quality of life. He suggests, therefore, that human
diversity ‘‘is no secondary complication (to be ignored, or to be introduced
‘later on’); it is a fundamental aspect of our interest in equality’’ (Sen 1992 , xi).
In this way, Sen introduces the notion of multiplicity to the distribution
process, broadening the focus on equality debates beyond resources to what-
ever people need to develop their capabilities.
Meanwhile, authors working within the framework of gender justice tend
to critique liberal-egalitarian theories of distributive justice as gender-blind
and androcentric. For example, many theories of egalitarian justice assume
that the concept of justice applies only to the public sphere, taking distribu-
tions within the family as given. Feminist political theorists have argued that
analyses of social justice that are sensitive to gender need to include the
private sphere and consider the gendered division of labour within it (see
Bubeck 1995 ; Okin 1989 ; Pateman 1987 ; Phillips 1997 ). They have also chal-
lenged the individualism inherent within much mainstream egalitarian the-
orizing, which marginalizes the impact of social structures, ignores the
signiWcance of social groups, and fails to identify structural inequalities (see
Young 2001 ). From this perspective, the liberal theories of equality have no
theory of inequality and so fail to analyse the origins of the forms of
inequality that they want to eradicate. Ingrid Robeyns, for example,
suggests that Dworkin’s liberal egalitarianism is ‘‘structurally unable to ac-
count for the cultural aspects of gender, race, and other dimensions of human
diversity that create unjust inequalities between people’’ (Robeyns 2003 , 541 ).
The pursuit of equal opportunities in the context of human diversity is a
complex endeavor.
Feminist theorists argue that, in the context of a patriarchal society, the
pursuit of gender equality is constantly entrapped by exaggeration and denial
(Rhode 1992 , 149 ). Two distinct strategies have consistently emerged, for
example, when considering how employment legislation ought to be drafted
in order to deal with the fact that women may require pregnancy leave and
beneWts. The Wrst approach proposes that pregnancy should be included
476 judith squires