Week 37:Sustainable Social Transformation is a Justice question

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Perhaps, a good number of us who did elementary and high school in the 1980’s and 1990’s will relate to the affirmative policies of widening access to education for children from historically marginalized communities. Such strategies were widespread across the world – in some cases still in place. For my case in Kenya, this was in the form of lowering grade points cut off for entry to national level secondary and university education for students from Arid and Semi-Arid regions that have been historically marginalized in national development.

Paradoxically, in most cases such equality and equity strategies often did not translate to the envisioned large-scale transformation of the communities 20 – 30 years later (a time at which the affirmed community member would be at the peak of career and productive life).

This is just one of many examples of the angst in the policies and practices envisaging Social Transformation, where so much effort is put in the quest for equality and equity yet nothing much seems to change. It all feels like a drop in the ocean and an ever-growing mountain that now feels too high to ever be surmounted.

Listening to the distinguished Professor Eunice Kamaara at a Tangaza University Symposium on 24 April 2023 helped contextualize this angst by putting Social Transformation in the perspective of a continuum of “righting” strategies and actions aimed at ensuring fair access to both tools (ladders) and opportunities (apples).

While equality and equity strategies positively contribute to “righting” society they both suffer a major shortcoming in that they do not address the root problem aka the apple tree is still bent in the favor of one side of society. The apples (opportunities) keep compounding over time thanks to the path dependence (the tendency for many socioeconomic systems to stick with the status quo). Their gains are therefore short lived and sometimes “chocked” by other compounding concurrent social challenges.

In a sense we can think of equality and equity helping society progress upwards towards cracking the proverbial “glass ceilings” that create social limits for some in society. However, because the foundational pillars are bent and rickety sustainable social transformation is therefore not realized.

A nifty illustration serves well here. It is possible to have gender equity but still have gender injustice. How?
Imagine the statistic of an institution with 30 men employees and 60 women employees. An easy conclusion is that things are looking rosy for the women in the institution.   Yet if the same data was disaggregated to reveal multiple diversities such as age, disabilities, and decision making rank (and how they intersect), the story can be drastically different for the case where all senior employees are young and male and women are twice older than the men holding equal rank. 

Ultimately, Sustainable Social Transformation is a question of justice - of ensuring the fair enjoyment by every person regardless of their identities and abilities.

This has two parts.

First is making things fair aka propping the tree back straight. Professor Kamaara invited us to even take the step further to the ethical dimension of not just propping the tree up but harvesting and fairly sharing out the apples (irrespective of who harvested) to account for the already endured losses & damages that may limit the ability of the marginalized group immediately accessing the apples once propped right.

Second is making sure every person fairly gets access to the apples (opportunities). This opens a wider lens of interrogating all possible combinations of persons. It’s the consciousness of recognizing and respecting human diversity. Diversity has two perspectives: Society as a mix of people who are different (no two people are the same); and an individual as a mix of identities – a woman can also be of color, disabled, uneducated and old – all these cannot be isolated or reduced out in defining who the person is. Simply put - not all women are the same.

Justice is then question of recognizing, respecting and ensuring fair distribution of resources, opportunities and labour for all diverse individuals in society. Justice and social transformation engages with the holistic diverse society and complex individual to examine inclusion – i.e., how to get everyone in the mix and in their mix – respected, engaged and ensure that they can enjoy opportunities, resources and contribute to society in a fair way.