The Meritocracy Myth

Everyone loves the idea of a level playing field. This expectation of fair competition underlies assumptions that the workforce is a meritocracy. A meritocracy is a system in which power, growth and advancement are vested in individual people based solely on talent, effort, and achievement…that advancement in such a system is based solely on performance as measured through objective criteria and demonstrated achievement. 

Meritocracy principles are built on assumptions that evaluations in the workforce are objective, but we know that as humans we are NOT capable of being completely objective. And if we know that, we can be realistic about the limitations of meritocracy principles in organizations where much of our evaluation in hiring and promoting is NOT based on purely objective criteria, despite our utopian belief and desire for this to be the case.

This episode holds the idea of meritocracy and women’s advancement up the scrutiny of the scientific knowledge of human behavior, biases and blind spots and the erroneous assumptions that guide meritocratic ideologies which ultimately serve to hinder women’s advancement.

Meritocracy can lead to framing the bias against, and resulting exclusion of, women in top-level positions of power pay and prestige as a failure to measure up. It suggests the problem lies outside of the organization and structural issues placing the blame directly on the shoulders of warrior women and that needs to be acknowledged, and interrupted. We’ll do just that in today’s episode of the Advancing Women Podcast, where empathy meets pragmatism…

“It’s not your fault, but it is your problem”™

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/meritocracy

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