The tired argument of meritocracy when used as a cudgel to put down why women don’t

deserve that seat/promotion/ platform/ opportunity - has become a double whammy for

WOC who find that their worth is too often tied to the visual tokenism they hold- and the

limitations race places on their efforts to experience equity.

Somehow, the diversity agenda at many a leadership level has stopped at gender, as if

this alone were all that were needed to show inclusion. This narrow lens of white-

washed feminism fails to be intersectional.

At the very least, how is such a reductive representation of women (50% of the

population) going to fly when from a cultural diversity standpoint in Australia where 1 in 2

of us are either born overseas or have a parent born overseas, we cannot see this

reflected in leadership nor positions of influence. And that’s before we even discuss the

demonstrated merit WOC bring to the table that never gets tabled.

How this manifests across politics, media, business & the arts - for example, is a blight

on the notion of a fair go this country prides itself on championing. To wit, the Bechdel

test, as a method for evaluating how women are portrayed in media, now has a

counterpart in the DuVernay Test, which investigates the presence of racially diverse

characters in films, TV shows, and other media. On both counts, women and WOC

respectively, are appallingly represented.

There’s a lot to unpack;

Why does cultural diversity all but fade away the higher the rank in executive office?

Why does intersectional feminism matter? What is the ethnicity pay gap? What is the

cultural load? What does the data tell us? What do colleagues tell us? What can we tell

you?

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