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This week’s episode, “We Just Hire on Merit (And Other Fairytales)”, starts with the backlash to Lieutenant General Susan Coyle, the first woman ever appointed Chief of Army in Australia. With nearly 40 years’ service and multiple senior command roles, Coyle is objectively qualified – yet the moment her appointment was announced, social media filled with claims she only got the job “because she’s a woman” and that “DEI has gone too far.”

From there, we unpack what meritocracy actually means, and how “we just hire on merit” is often used to question women’s suitability for leadership while leaving decades of male‑only appointments completely unexamined. We touch on the broader DEI backlash in places like the USA – where diversity programs are being dismantled in universities and public institutions – and how this affects not just women, but also people of colour, disabled and neurodivergent people who were only just starting to see doors open.

Along the way we talk about Sussan Ley being wheeled out as a solution to a party’s “women problem” and then moved aside, the outrage when a school’s student leadership team happened to be all girls, and the persistent narrative that any gain for a marginalised group must mean standards have been lowered. We finish by asking who gets to define “merit” in the first place – and what we all gain when leadership actually reflects the communities it serves

Links:

Article on Lieutenant General Susan Coyle - the first woman to head the Australian Army

Article on the school that chose all girls as school captains