Equal Right, Equal Opportunities

The essence of the equality of opportunity is a stipulation that all people should be treated similarly, unhampered by artificial barriers or prejudices or preferences, except when particular “distinctions can be explicitly justified.”The aim is that important jobs should go to those “the most qualified”––persons most likely to perform ably in a given task––and not to go to persons for arbitrary or irrelevant reasons, such as circumstances of birth, upbringing, friendship ties to whoever is in power.
The terms “the equality of opportunity” and “equal opportunity” are interchangeable, with occasional slight variations: “the equality of opportunity” has more of a sense of being an abstract political concept, while “equal opportunity” is sometimes used as an adjective, usually in the context of employment regulations, to identify an employer, a hiring approach, or law. Equal opportunity provisions have been written into regulations and have been debated in courtrooms.