The struggle for equality, both social and racial, is a major theme in modern Western history. Discuss the evolution of Western society away from a...

Although radical income inequalities still exist in the west, there have been many changes in both laws and attitudes leading to greater class and economic equality. Much of the power of the hereditary nobility was limited in the French Revolution and by the Reform bills in Britain before the twentieth century. 

Since 1945, most western countries have passed legislation making it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race. In the United States, a landmark...

Although radical income inequalities still exist in the west, there have been many changes in both laws and attitudes leading to greater class and economic equality. Much of the power of the hereditary nobility was limited in the French Revolution and by the Reform bills in Britain before the twentieth century. 

Since 1945, most western countries have passed legislation making it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race. In the United States, a landmark was the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended such practices as separate schools, bus seats, and drinking fountains for white and black people. Women have slowly gained equal rights, including the right to vote, over the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. Many western countries have legalized gay marriage in the past decade and otherwise passed measures to prevent discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and similar legislation in other countries provides greater equality for the disabled.

This being said, the Gini coefficient, a measure of economic inequality, after a brief decline, has been rising for the past decade, and may suggest that despite legal protections for minorities and the elimination of many privileges of a hereditary nobility, western societies may not be significantly more equal now than they were in previous centuries.