Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice The Capability Approach Re-Examined, 2017a

98 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice
probability, or else, if the probability is significantly less, it is implied
that we do not have the capability. That is, arguably, a rather unhelpful
way of thinking about real life processes. For example, the problem
with women’s opportunities in advanced economies is definitely not
that women have no capabilities to achieve professional success; rather,
the problem is that, given a variety of mechanisms that are biased
against female professionals, the robustness of the capabilities they are
given is weaker. If an equally talented man and woman both want to
succeed professionally, they may, in a liberal society, both have that
capability — but the probability that the man will be able to succeed will
be higher than the woman’s. She does have some opportunity, but that
opportunity is less robust. Probabilities of success if one were to want
to exercise that capability would be a way to express this. In the above
gender case, the source of the different probabilities lies in the social and
environmental conversion factors. But the source of the difference in
robustness could also lie in internal factors. For example, a person with
a psychiatric condition may have some opportunities for finding a job,
but those opportunities may be much more precarious then they would
be if she didn’t have those psychiatric challenges.
and if so, which ones?
Amartya Sen (1990c, 460) has described capabilities as
the freedom[s] to achieve valuable human functionings, which can vary
from such elementary things as being well-nourished and avoiding
escapable morbidity and mortality, to such complex achievements
as having self-respect, being well-integrated in society, and so on.
Capabilities thus reflect the actual freedoms that people respectively
enjoy in being able to lead the kind of lives they have reason to value.
But several philosophers and social scientists have questioned the
understanding (or, for philosophers: ‘conceptualisation’) of capabilities
in terms of freedoms, asking whether capabilities could plausibly be
understood as freedoms, whether Sen was not overextending the use
of freedom, whether freedom is all there is to the capability approach,
and whether it is wise to use the terminology of freedom for the goals