EQUITY
What Is It?
Equity is both an outcome and a process. Equity names and addresses systemic inequities that benefit and favour some groups and often disproportionately impact others including cultural communities, Indigenous, Black and People of Colour (IBPOC).
Individuals and communities with intersecting identities of Indigeneity, race, gender, gender expression and sexual orientation, ability and class can be, and often are, negatively affected by favoured social systems. Equity commitments seek ways to transform current structures, policies, and processes in order to balance power and influence, expand access, and create new ways of walking together that nourish all people by embedding intersectionality in institutional and sectoral change.
Equity amplifies and affirms the dignity and rights of all people by centering the diverse voices of Indigenous and racialized peoples and communities in creative and resilient processes, informed by Indigenous knowledge and different world views across the ways we do our work.
Source: Mumbi Maina
How Is It Used?
Equity is a framework or lens through which approaches to an innovation effort must be examined. Some questions to consider include:
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How will advancing equity be articulated in your initiative to ensure it is visible and explicit throughout?
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How is equity embedded in the construction of your innovation team?
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What is the historical context of this initiative as it relates to the processes of colonization of Indigenous territories? Of racial oppression?
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How will people know about, and be invited to join this initiative?
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Who will benefit from this initiative? How accessible are these benefits? Who will be burdened?
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What are potential unintended consequences, and how might they be mitigated?
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How does the initiative align with and support racialized communities, Indigenous peoples, low-income populations, and other priority populations?
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How does the initiative build long-term relationships of trust between diverse communities and stakeholders?
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What do we need to measure to track equity impacts and progress for the initiative? How will we know if we’re making progress?
More Info
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Book: Me and White Supremacy, Layla Saad
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Book: So you want to talk about race? Ijeoma Oluo
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Video: The urgency of intersectionality, Kimberlé Crenshaw
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Book: White Fragility, Robin DiAngelo