How Do You Quantify Equality?

There's a poll lurking about somewhere on here that asks the question- "Do you believe that it is possible for both people in a D/s relationship to be truly equal?"

Says I, "Yes. Our worth as people is equal, we are equally invested in our relationship, we are equally responsible for the health of our relationship. What isn't equal is the amount of authority we have (he has more than I do)." And that's pretty much all I thought about it until Rhiannon responded to the poll with:

"I don't believe in 100% equality in any relationship, either kinky or vanilla. Someone is always going to be more dependent on the other person, whether financially or emotionally."

That's her opinion and more power to her, but it got me thinking about the areas where Cookie and I are not equals and if those inequalities made one of us "less than" the other.

Cookie > Squeaky
Cookie < Squeaky

It made me wonder how, exactly, do you quantify an idea or concept? Because really, that's all equality is- It's just a notion that people have about value.

If I were a math whiz I could probably make up some fancy equation where every aspect of our selves and our relationship could be assigned a numerical value and figure it out from there. I could give things like emotions letters, and assign pi to cooking abilities (because it's pi, yo). If I were any good at math, what-so-ever, I could figure that stuff out and decide, once and for all, which one of us had more value than the other.

But I'm not sure what the purpose of that would be other than to say, "I'm worth more than you, I'm better than you, my value is more than yours." And that sort of thing, although I know it gets a lot of people's rocks off, just isn't a healthy concept for me to embrace.

And then I was wondering; Does earning less than your partner decrease your worth as a person or your worth in the relationship? Is being more emotionally dependent decrease your value as a person? Does being a D-type mean you're more important than your s-type partner? Really effing tricky questions to answer, if they are even answerable.

After all that I wondered- Does it even matter? Or should it even matter?

For me, I don't think it should. I mean, what's the point of it other than being able to say "I'm better than you"? It won't make my relationship healthier or happier, it wouldn't make me feel better about myself as person. I prefer to think of it as an "averaging out" kind of deal-

He may contribute more financially, but I contribute more around the home- Our contributions to our home evens out.
I may have a wider knowledge base, but he thinks in ways that connect things I miss- Our intellectual contributions even out.
I'm more logical and he's a dreamer- Our contributions to our future plans evens out.

One of us may be better at something than the other is, but taken as a whole- I'd say we're pretty even except on the whole authority thing- but I don't see that as something that effects our worth to each other or our relationship. So on a whole I'd say we're equals... As much as an unquantifiable concept can be quantified, that is.

A quick side-note: Please keep in mind that by using a quote from someone I am not attacking them, I'm providing source material for my thought process. There's a difference between attacking a person and having a difference of opinions.