 ‘Formal’ equality of opportunity rules out formal discrimination on grounds such as a person’s race, ethnicity, age or gender. What is the underlying concern, shared by most theorists and the general population, with a society lacking formal equality of opportunity? The concern seems to be rooted in the belief that traits such as a persons’ gender or race are elements over which people have no control and, hence, a society in which people’s race or gender have fundamental effects on their lifetime economic prospects treats people unfairly. In such societies, whether people were born as the favored gender or race, and hence were favored economically, would simply be a matter of luck. Rawls’ claim is that structuring a society so that this ‘natural lottery’ has such fundamental effects on people’s lives is immoral, when we have the option to structure it another way, with a system of formal equality of opportunity. 