Justice, Fairness and Equality

Recently been doing some reflection of school times... one of the thing that crossed my mind (it is strange but please bear with me) was the moral lessons. Specifically the topic of justice (keadilan) which has two sub-topics being fairness (adil) and equality (saksama). The text book defined fairness as getting what is deserved while equality is getting the same as the others. (please note these are definition based on what I understood after months of memorizing the definitions ^^)

So anyway, the question is how can justice be made up of two components that are contradictory? It is almost impossible to be fair and equal most of the time. In group work, it is fair for hardworking group members to get better evaluation results, but to be equal would be to give all members of the group the same results would it not? Or in another situation, a group of people go out to eat then the bill is split up equally but then a girl friend of mine once commented, but the guys eat so much more.... so how is it fair?

Or there was this thing I heard from a friend who said that in some countries, value of traffic summons is based on the person's profession. For example, a businessman would receive higher summons than a student for the same offence. The reason is that the businessman would have higher income hence need higher summons to have the same punishing effect as the student with lower income (assuming not a rich kid). So, it is fair for the businessman to be charged higher than the student, but it is not equal.... unless the argument is that the effect is equal? (yes I do argue with myself and get all confused at the end ^^)

Then I went on to think about gender equality. Honestly I think men and women are different and there will never be true equality. How can it be equal if men never experience childbirth? ^^ Employers may be reluctant to take on female employees or to train them as they are more likely to leave or be less committed after getting married and having children. At the same time, men are more likely to be more committed to their work to better provide for their family. Please note the "more likely". It is not always that way and hence gender discrimination comes in, when women who work as hard or harder than their counterparts yet get lower pays or are restricted from promotion. So to employers it maybe fair to have reservations about female employees but then again it is not equal....

So how to balance fairness and equality in justice? Perhaps the way democracy is the balance point between communism and capitalism....