It has been mentioned above that capabilities are defined as the real, or substantive, freedoms that people have to achieve certain doings and beings. A frequent misunderstanding in the secondary literature concerns the use of the term ‘freedom’. Especially in his later work, Sen often equates capabilities with freedoms, without always specifying in more detail what kind of freedoms he is referring to. Yet this equation can easily be misunderstood since, as Sen himself acknowledges, there are many kinds of freedom (some valuable, some detrimental, and some trivial) and ‘freedom’ means very different things to different people.