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

1. Introduction
15
capabilities of human beings (e.g. Lewis and Giullari 2005; Robeyns
2003, 2010; Addabbo, Lanzi and Picchio 2010).
Moreover, for millions of girls and women worldwide, the most
important capability that is denied to them is extremely basic — the
capability to live in the first place. As Sen showed in an early study and
as has been repeatedly confirmed since, millions of women are ‘missing’
from the surface of the Earth (and from the population statistics), since
newborn girls have been killed or fatally neglected, or female foetuses
have been aborted, because they were females in a society in which
daughters are more likely to be seen as a burden, especially when
compared to sons (Sen 1990b, 2003b, 1992b; Klasen 1994; Klasen and
Wink 2003). In sum, tracking the gap between women’s achievements
in income and wealth or labour market outcomes will not reveal
some crucial dimensions of gender inequality, whereas the capability
approach draws attention to these non-income-based dimensions.
Using the capability approach when thinking about prosperity
and social progress has another advantage: it will impede policy
makers from using mistaken assumptions about human beings in
their policies, including how we live together and interact in society
and communities, what is valuable in our lives and what kind of
governmental and societal support is needed in order for people (and
in particular the disadvantaged) to flourish. For example, in their study
of disadvantage in affluent societies, in particular the UK and Israel,
Jonathan Wolff and Avner De-Shalit discuss the effects of a government
policy of clearing a slum by moving the inhabitants to newly built tower
blocks. While there may be clear material advantages to this policy — in
particular, improving the hygiene conditions in which people live — a
capabilitarian analysis will point out that this policy damages the social
aspects of people’s wellbeing, since social networks and communities are
broken up and cannot simply be assumed to be rebuilt in the new tower
blocks (Wolff and De-Shalit 2007, 168, 178–79). Since social relationships
among people are key to their wellbeing, this may well have additional
derivative effects on other dimensions of people’s lives, such as their
mental health. Understanding people as beings whose nature consists
of a plurality of dimensions can help governments to think carefully
through all the relevant effects of their policies.