Rage on the Rocks
Two women. Zero chill. Rage on the Rocks is because we love the world enough to be mad, actually, and leave with a reason to keep going. Pour something strong (tea definitely counts). We'll wait.
Rage on the Rocks
We Just Hire on Merit (And Other Fairytales)
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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
Welcome to Rage on the Rocks. Where two women pour a drink, drop the HR voice, and talk about the systems we're told are fair, but somehow always seem to land men on top. Today we're raging about meritocracy. The lovely story that says the best person wins, the cream rises to the top. And if women, First Nations people, people of colour, or disabled people are not in the room, it's just because they didn't make the cut. Not because the room was built for someone else. We're going to talk about what meritocracy actually means, how diversity and inclusion measures have been twisted into handouts and political correctness. And why dismantling DEI doesn't actually create more fairness. It just quietly restores the old boys' club. Hi, Lauren. Good afternoon. Hello. We're here at The Last Supper again.
SPEAKER_00How amazing is this place? We are, we love it. We love it. Having a little sip on the old wine. Nowhere Road. I believe is what I am drinking.
SPEAKER_01Nowhere Road. We could have a whole rage just about that, once you're going to be able to do that.
SPEAKER_00We really could. It's very fitting.
SPEAKER_01Yep. I have a pin noir again today.
SPEAKER_00Dry season is coming.
SPEAKER_01Dry season. That's right. The dragonflies have been out in swarms, by the way, so it's been nice to see. Firstly, can we just have like a breath and a bit of a check-in? Because it's been a big few weeks here for holding big emotional things.
SPEAKER_00And I'm just want to check in, checking in to see how you are. Yeah, it's been a heavy time for the Northern Territory. I mean, we had essentially accumulating natural disasters during our wet season, which had a huge impact on a lot of families, some of whom are only just beginning to go home. We lost Trish Crossen, who's a very well-known politician from the Northern Territory, but she founded the Working Women's Centre here in the territory. Absolute champion for women's rights and communities and equality, and somebody that I have felt supported by in my own political career and aspirations. And of course, today, absolutely devastating news that they found what they believe to be the body of five-year-old Come and Jay little baby. So if you've been following that story, five-year-old allegedly abducted from Alice Springs, and the whole community has been out searching for this little baby for five days, and it's just ended in the most horrific, devastating way. So our community is, I think, holding each other pretty tightly and doing amazing things as our community does under immense pressure. But it's been a long period of being under pressure.
SPEAKER_01Yep. How are you? It really has. I felt it too. And there's been some other people in our community that have passed away of late. One in particular that no I knew on a personal level as well a little. And someone that was very involved in the community. And I think some of these things hit us hard when perhaps they're people of perhaps a similar age with children. And I don't know, it only makes a difference to me personally as well because I have children and she's a woman and a mother and a worker and all the things I am. So I think it it makes us reflect very seriously on our own mortality and our own children and absolutely. Yeah, it's heavy going. And theirs.
SPEAKER_00And I think it's important to name it because we should always be or feel that we can be honest about the heaviness we're feeling from time to time. So we are going to go ahead with our rage this afternoon, but we did want to just give a moment to those fabulous women who've had an impact on our community and our life and pay some acknowledgement to Kumanjay Little Baby's life as well.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. And as you touched on thinking about the community of Alice Springs, the incredible people that have been out there looking for her and her family that I'm sure are just completely devastated right now. So there's just no words, there's no words, but there is a lot of love in the territory at the moment.
SPEAKER_00We send you all love as well and just wish if we could all just be there and just hold each other, like that's all anyone can do at the moment. So look out for each other, check in with each other and name the feelings. And it's you know, it's not nice to sit with grief and anguish and anger and worry, but we it we do experience it, we're all human, and um just notice and look after yourselves. Beautiful.
SPEAKER_01So I'm taking a cleansing breath before we move on to talking about this very serious topic that we can rage about meritocracy. Now, this one was your idea, Lauren. This one was my idea. And I am very happy you brought it up. So I'm gonna hand straight over to you because I want to hear this interesting story that sparked your imagination.
SPEAKER_00Look, it's something that I think about uh often, as many of these subjects are, particularly in the last couple of weeks, because we did see it kind of elevated in the Australian consciousness, as Lieutenant General Susan Coyle became the first female chief of army in the army's 125-year history. So the 42nd Army Chief, which is pretty bloody fantastic for her, and should be celebrated, also comes with a whole load of other shit though, right? So this happens and without a doubt, before time has even passed, people are questioning the appointment. And good on them, there was a lot of people in leadership who were absolutely quite rightly standing up for this recruitment. But just people going, Oh, I don't know anything about this woman, but isn't it fair to ask whether she got the job because she's a woman? No, it's it's not. But interestingly, simultaneously, there is a class action of about two and a half thousand women who served, about a culture of systemic sexual abuse, harassment, and discrimination. And it is interesting that these two things are happening in parallel. Be interesting to see how, whether leadership from a woman shapes that discourse in any way. But it just got me really thinking about the people, including media personalities, who jumped on board straight away to essentially say, well, we don't win if somebody's just given the job without merit. Now, this woman was she enrolled in the army the year I was born. There is nothing that I have read about Lieutenant General Susan Call that would make me think that she is not at all meritorious for this position. And so let's join the chorus of people who are saying this is great, but it probably goes down the line of um me last week of saying, Do some people need some help using Google?
SPEAKER_01I laughed last week and I'm laughing this week. I don't know anything about this woman.
SPEAKER_00Well, it's not that fucking hard, mate.
SPEAKER_01Um, and sorry, Joe Blow down the road. Do you need to know about who's running the army? Is that really your biggest concern in mind? Oh, you do if of course.
SPEAKER_00Well. Because what if it wasn't on merit and it puts everyone at risk? That's the implication, though, right? That's the implication. So that is.
SPEAKER_01And my question is, would he have asked that question of a man getting that role?
SPEAKER_00No.
SPEAKER_01You know, did he really earn that position? Show me your qualifications, etc.
SPEAKER_00Do you think that we would be sitting here today talking about the chief of army appointment if it wasn't the first woman in the 125-year history of the army? No, we wouldn't. No. I haven't served. I have great respect for people who've served who are in our defense forces and for the history, like many people, will have family impacts and implications of that. Haven't served myself, and I'm positive we wouldn't be talking about it if it wasn't a woman. So, no, I don't think that Joe Blow, who remains anonymous, but whose name is out across various New Zealands, um, with a tweet that they had tweeted out, we just wouldn't even be talking about it, let's be honest. But it does raise a number of questions then. I haven't quite landed in my head, but that tension between celebration, a woman heading up the army after 125 years, and also being like, wow, one in 125 years? Yes. Actually, should we be more critical of that? Not of her. Make that distinction right up, not of her, but we have waited 125 years to put a woman in. When Susan Coyle moves on at some point, as she inevitably will, how long will it be before there's another woman?
SPEAKER_01Well, Lauren, we have had one female Prime Minister of Australia. How long ago was that now?
SPEAKER_00A long time.
SPEAKER_01A long time ago. This was brought into my consciousness in a very stark way. Last year when I was in Canberra with my daughter, and we went to Parliament House. Poor girl, everyone else got to go to Westfield. I took my daughter to Parliament House, both of them. Which on you? Both parliaments. Democracy. I know, could you feel the power in this room? And we went to look at the portraits of the Prime Ministers, and she did ask a question about why there was only one woman. What was your answer? Misogyny. I was really clear. Of course I was. Carry on. Yeah, and it did inspire me to go and start reading the book that Julia wrote that was about her famous misogyny speech. So we have lots of these conversations in my house. But if we look as a country, we would like to think that we are beyond this conversation of women needing some kind of leg up into these positions or not getting them fairly. But actually, we're so not. We're so not.
SPEAKER_00We're not. And it is that when you've got a woman who is overqualified for a role, the community at large, and often the professional communities that those women exist in still have this, ooh, but is it just equality and inclusion measures? People don't even understand how equality and inclusion measures are working for the large part, I would suggest. Why they're there. We can have a debate till the cows come home about quotas, but I just think that's really interesting that you can have women who are absolutely overqualified, you will still have this conversation.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. And thinking about the basic definition of meritocracy, right? So people are chosen and promoted based on their abilities and achievements, not on wait for it, irrelevant factors like family background, gender, race, or class. So in that definition, we assume that those irrelevant factors, obviously, by virtue of them being irrelevant, don't make any difference. What we actually know is that some of those things do make a difference. Not everyone starts at the same level as others with the same opportunities.
SPEAKER_00Maybe it's a letter and it's got no rungs.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Maybe you didn't get to go to the fancy school and get the great education and have the stable home life and all of those amazing things that data tells us quite clearly make a difference with people. It assumes equal opportunity and objective measures of merit, which we know we don't have when education, things like unpaid care, networks, discrimination, they're all uneven, right? There's no neutral or universal metric for merit. It's just a very superficial argument when people go down the merit-based route, I think, not considering all of the other factors.
SPEAKER_00It's like the question of what is success. It's it's different to all people. And I agree with you. I mean, we were talking just before we started recording about a story that broke late last year. It was about a very posh private school, I believe, where all of the house captains were exceptional women, women of high caliber, if you will. Tony Abbott, exceptional young women, and there was an absolute uproar about it. And I was in two minds about it. My first reaction was to have a little giggle because I'm just petty like that sometimes. And then the other half of me is like, well, there's some truth to this because equality and achieving equality for women and girls also requires young men to have positive role models to look up to. And actually, maybe there's some merit in elevating young men, exceptional young men, into some of these positions, and a whole range of other young people who might have other qualities that might then show something different to the rest of the school body.
SPEAKER_01I think an important part of that story is knowing how they came to be school captains. You know, if they're elected by the student body is different to being elected by the teachers, you know, was it a campaigning type of deal? Was it a popularity contest? Speech contests. Those two things can be quite the same thing sometimes in a school. Yeah, so I I think the how is quite important because the other point of argument there is if there were more boys at the school than girls, then boys voted for the girls too. So maybe they saw those girls as their representative. More boys than girls. Yeah, so those boys like if it was an election type of thing. So that probably matters as well. But it's true when you can say that of, you know, children with disabilities or you know, our neurodivergent community, for example. When I look at how some schools choose their school captains and leadership groups as well, there's every possibility that it does look a bit like a popularity contest, and some students just don't fit that mould. No. And we need to be thinking about why we need those leaders, what are they there for?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And does it fit our sort of methods of choosing as well?
SPEAKER_00And it's beautiful, right? Like, nerd as I am, there's nothing that lights me up more than a friend saying, My son or daughter is preparing their speech to pitch to be elected as school captain. I love it, right? I do love it. But I also know reality, especially in the Northern Territory, people learn in different ways. They also deliver more strongly in different ways. So if we're getting to a place where we can accept that some people need differentiated learning, and I could sit here and say, you probably learn in a different way than I do. We we might think about the same things. I dare say we think about them in very different ways, uh, and we visualize these things in very different ways. Yep. Then we can get that far, but then we're like, and in order to be elected, you have to give the most brilliant speech on this day at this time. And that's just not possible for a lot of kids, but it doesn't mean that they wouldn't be absolutely fabulous for the school and that school body.
SPEAKER_01And that fits with that idea of we just hire on merit. Sort of that modern corporate for we hire people who look, sound, and think like the guys already here, and then we'll call it a process. I think this is worth mentioning. This is at great risk of disappearing down the US politics rabbit hole. So I'm going to monitor this conversation very direct carefully. But one of the parts that we both of us cannot fail to mention in this are the massive DEI or what is it, diversity, equity and inclusion. Is that what they it stands for over there? In the US. They've had this big DEI backlash over there that has seen the government cut funding to organizations that have DEI programs and policies, the most notable ones, universities, etc. When they didn't comply, government would cut funding. And universities had to take them to court. And that's sort of been this never-ending thing. The US government has websites where they have removed, and I can't help but giggle a little bit because it's so ridiculous. It feels like it's not real, Sarah. But say it, say it anyway. Removed all references to women that did different things, remove references to black people. Slavery. Slavery. So just completely erasing historically.
SPEAKER_00Fucking slavery. Oh, including information about slavery, that's DEI. Like, what planet are we on? Honestly, and I just find it really hard to fathom as well why people wouldn't want equality and inclusion. What is it about that? I mean, other I do know the answer to this. It's a power thing, right? It's it is always, I feel like if this part of the community gets more rights, then that must come at a cost to me. Absolutely. That generally is what underlines it, and I don't feel that it's fair when actually what is currently happening is the thing that is not fair. Because if you remove that and you're not making a concerted effort to let people who might have a disability or might be in a poorer neighbourhood or might come from a different ethnic background, that these jobs are available for them to apply to, then you're only actually really asking the same group of people over and over and over to apply for these opportunities. And sorry, okay, it might not be DEI, but that isn't merit either. Well, it's not merit.
SPEAKER_01Merit, according to them, is framed as being neutral.
SPEAKER_00You know, so it's not neutral if you're only distributing the opportunities to pale, stale white men.
SPEAKER_01You're not trying to convince me, are you? Because I'm totally on your side. Do you feel like I'm I am?
SPEAKER_00I may be a little bit. I know I'm I'm getting really comfy in my rage. You totally are. As a young brown, brownish woman, I'm leaning into it. I'm brown, I'm leaning into it. Here my rage, yes. Because I feel it, and I feel it sometimes with women too.
SPEAKER_01And it's important to recognize and call out what that DEI sort of narrative is. That DEI equals, to some people, lowering standards, it's ideological hiring, it's reverse discrimination. Oh my gosh, there are so many things. I know. Rabbit hole alert, definitely. Uh so I did a little bit of looking and I was interested in what happens when you don't have these measures, or we didn't have these measures in place as well. So on the ASX 300 boards, women's representation has almost doubled in a decade from 399 seats in 2016 to 781 in 2025. 73% of boards now have at least 30% women. So the shift has coincided with explicit targets campaigns and the DEI pressure. So it works. It does work. And I do know, because I have done the Australian Institute of Company Directors course, and they talk a lot now about the importance of diversity on boards. And it's not just women, it's the whole range of diversity that we're talking about that actually it strengthens things. It doesn't weaken anything. Because also it's about what is merit? What are we actually trying to fill here? Like your question around what is success, right? For example, with the army, it may be that the army is also in a place where being a woman brings a skill that they desperately need to lead the army. So, yeah, she might have all of the army qualifications, no doubt she does, because she didn't just come from a private up to, you know, leading the army. That did not happen.
SPEAKER_00They put an ad on the internet, on Facebook. We're looking for a woman. Any woman. Doesn't matter who you are.
SPEAKER_01Not brown though.
unknownNo.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we're not ready for that.
SPEAKER_01We're not ready. One step at a time. But the point being, particularly in positions of leadership like that, too, that actually the gender, or maybe it's the neurodivergence, or maybe it's a racial profile, for example, maybe that's exactly what that organization needs at the time for something. So it's just such a lazy, cheap argument to be arguing this meritocracy piece. A thousand percent.
SPEAKER_00No, it gives me the shits. So many things give me the shits. It doesn't, but this is a massive rabbit hole because it raises so many questions, right? It's that representation question for me. And I again, this is something I wrestle with all the time because I think representation is so important. And you think about things like media, you think about young Aboriginal women, young women of Indian heritage, of a whole range of heritages. I'm just putting myself in there. Watching TV, never seeing a person that looks like them, right? Media representation is so important. It's really important in community leadership that people are able to see themselves reflected in some way. And I'm not saying it has to be like I'm a man and therefore it has to be a man, but there are many, many ways that we can have our identity reflected back to us. And I think that's incredibly important. But I don't necessarily think that just being there is the work. I don't necessarily think that the one person being there is the thing that's going to shift the whole system. And that's where I think the challenge is going to be here in terms of chief of the army. You think about do we think that a woman is the chief of the army is going to change what's happening underneath, which is two and a half thousand women, saying there are real systemic issues here around the way we are treated because we are women. That's a huge mammoth task for her. I imagine that if that was us, I think we would feel personally invested in doing something about that. She's one person, and I really feel for her in that moment because I know what that's like, and I know what it's like to be alongside women who talk about supporting other women, but then will equally say, But I haven't experienced any sexism. And I think, well, that's either not true and you haven't noticed it, you're not picking up on it, or how great is that for you that you're in a privileged enough position to not have experienced that. Yep. And if we're gonna sit on stages talking about supporting other women, we have to start understanding the experiences of other women.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And thinking about our new leader of the army, I can absolutely see how there will be that pressure on her potentially to fix these problems. Oh, yeah. Because she's a woman. And even thinking back to our episode last week, and we talked about sexual assault, etc. If she goes in trying to fix a culture that's existed in the defense force since the beginning of time, she's also battling societal cultural issues out there to do with the patriarchy and misogyny. So it's not like she's fixing an army problem. This is actually a societal problem.
SPEAKER_00It's the nice cliff. It's the Susan Lee problem. And look, I've met Susan um more than once, and not my flavour of politics. She was selected to be the leader of the opposition federally. And I would say was absolutely set up and not supported to deal with their women problem. I think they knew they had a women problem. The only time they talked about women was, oh yes, no, we kind of have to do something about this violence against women, Malaki. And I think she was put in there to deal with the perception that they had a women problem, and then as soon as they could say that she'd mucked something up and just wasn't right, they turfed her. And who's in there? Great move, Angus. And that was one of the first times I'd actually even heard that term, but it makes so much sense about the glass cliff.
SPEAKER_01I have not heard about the glass cliff. But as you were talking about politics, the thing that came to my mind, and I can't, I don't know why I'm laughing. But about Tony Abbott being a little bit more.
SPEAKER_00Because it's better than crying. It's better than crying.
SPEAKER_01Wasn't Tony Abbott the Minister for Women?
SPEAKER_00He was. He was. And I'm pretty sure he suggested we could do some mining or something. I'm sorry. I actually think I'd be pleased to not be counted as a woman of high caliber to Tony Abbott's standards. We don't want him to define it. We just want him to shut up. But I feel I actually feel for Susan Leigh. I do. I think I had this conversation with a couple of people through my LinkedIn about that situation. I just think she was set up. We'll put her in there because we've got a cultural issue in our party, and then we'll do everything to undermine her. And we definitely won't give her any support, and then we'll boot her. And I think that happens to a lot of women. I don't think that's a situation that would be unfamiliar to women. And I really felt for her.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Actually.
SPEAKER_01Because she's a very accomplished, smart woman. She was a bloody pilot. Absolutely could be the leader of the party in her own right without having to be elevated because she's there to fix a problem about women.
SPEAKER_00But that's but that's what it is, right? And and I will I will say without saying too much, people are in politics absolutely aware of the optics of, you know, when you've got a room, say there's a ministers meeting and it's largely men. As if they don't know what that looks like, and if a camera's coming in where the women are, where the as if people are not aware of the optics of that. And it really fucking shits me. Because that still happens, that's still been happening in the last decade. You know, we talk about cabinets that are full of women, and then the next cabinet is not, and we just go back to the status quo, it just shits me.
SPEAKER_01Yep, that's right. And in, you know, that particular space, and not to get too stuck down the rabbit hole of politics as well, but thinking about how to challenge, I know, but you know, it's your zone of genius, and I love it. I love to learn. But even the idea of say running for politics and campaigning, etc., I am a single parent, single income person with children. I need to obviously make money to put roof over my head and there's no backup for me. I feel like that would be a really hard task at the moment for me to even consider doing that. And I mean, the same could be said for a single dad as well, potentially, you know. Totally. Yeah. So like, and this is that piece about the meritocracy and stuff as well. But I want to talk about very briefly why we have these DEI initiatives in the first place. We've touched a little bit on it, but what we didn't mention was things like we've talked about the very conscious reasons why we might choose, say, a woman, but we haven't talked about unconscious bias. I know. Don't you love this topic? It's really great. I think it's important to mention because I think a lot of the time there are these unconscious biases sitting in our brains, and our brains like to take the shortcuts. It helps us automate things, it helps us be more efficient, etc. And brains naturally favor what is familiar, what is already there.
SPEAKER_00Yep.
SPEAKER_01And so if your culture is made up of middle-aged white men, yeah, and you're making the decisions, your brain can make decisions based on that. I prefer this middle-aged white man. And you won't necessarily know that it's happening.
SPEAKER_00And your AI is doing that too, because it's built off human input.
SPEAKER_01Oh, we could do a whole other twist on that.
SPEAKER_00Um, we will. But yes, just as a side note, it's built off human input, does the same thing. So if you're using that to help you with your thinking, it's certainly not giving you more diversity.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's exactly right. In that unconscious bias space, overvaluing people that might sort of feel right, they look and sound like our past leaders or like us, etc. We might not even know we're what we don't know we're doing it. Uh, we can underestimate the competence of certain, and there's data around this as well. We underestimate the competence of women, people of colour again, people with disabilities again, like all of the traditionally marginalized groups. This is what the evidence tells us. Yeah. So, I mean, unconscious bias doesn't really mean that you're this sort of secret villain. It means that you're just in autopilot, really, and you're making selections. So it's not that we're being horrible, but it is important to talk about it, bring it out in the open. And that is a big part of why some of these policies get put into place. Because people, many people are not aware that they have these unconscious biases. So we have to actually put a policy lever in place.
SPEAKER_00Yes, to make people challenge that. I totally agree, and I think it's really healthy to be challenging yourself on a regular basis. And I tell this to people that I interact with, I've said this to groups of young people, I've said it to people who are thinking about running in politics. I think it's really important to be listening to people whose perspectives are different to yours, even where you know that you don't agree with someone that you are listening and interacting and challenging your why you have created a certain view of something. You might come out of that feeling more strident about your own beliefs about something, perhaps, or you might actually start to think, oh, actually, when when did I start to think in this way? And that's not quite right. And I think that's natural and it's a really important part of lifelong learning. And it's just it's just such a healthy thing to do as we get more and more I don't know, we just get more distance between us as people. Yep. I think we have to do that more and more and more because we've got more commonalities than we don't. Just now this is taking a whole other turn. But at the at the end of the day, that's what it's about, is it not? Yes. And it's why you need to have diversity on hiring panels, for example, because everyone will be thinking something different.
SPEAKER_01And how good does it feel to have your brain rocked a little bit by someone with a lot of different idea? Yeah, you're wow! I would never have thought of that without you here. It can be really, really and if you don't love it, think about why. Yeah, sit with that feeling, sit in that discomfort. Yes. I need to ask you now about glimmers. Yep. There has to be a glimmer in all of this.
SPEAKER_00Look, this one is a hard one today. It's not related to what we're talking about, other than the fact that I think there's some incredible women in leadership and well done. Lieutenant General Susan Coyle, that made me happy to see, and it also made me happy to see some people crying because just like wow wow. Get over yourselves. But one thing that I read today that is, I thought a bit of a glimmer. I haven't experienced it myself, but postpartum depression. I know a lot of people experience postpartum depression, and I learned for the first time today that there's actually a new oral medication that's I think it's relatively early here in Australia, but maybe a little tiny bit longer in places like America, and that it can be effective within like three days. And I just thought about all those women out there. We talk about women's health a lot, and I just thought, how good is that that there's some movement in women's health? And that just gave me some hope today, because fucking great. I love that.
SPEAKER_01I love that. Anything around women's health is good news in that space.
SPEAKER_00Good news. It's good news, and we thank the people who are working on that because it's such a hard time. I mean, you know, having babies is such a hard, lonely time. It's a lovely time, it's an amazing time. But if you're in a place that isn't amazing and lovely all the time, that's very lonely. And it's nice to know that it's being recognised and there's, you know, there's some work towards something that might be effective and easier than what we've had.
SPEAKER_01If we think about the knock-on effect of some of those things as well, obviously huge effects on women and huge effects on the relationship between the woman and baby, too. You know, and that comes with with a whole heap of thoughts and effects that can stay with the woman, the baby, and their relationship for a long time, too. And there can't be anything more important than that relationship.
SPEAKER_00No, no, no, no. It's the risks of not supporting a mum in that time are really big for both of them. So great news, I thought.
SPEAKER_01Great news. My glimmer is not unlike yours. I know, women's health. We were sinking. Showing. And it was sparked by uh my daughter coming home that she had had some vaccinations. Yep. As she's in high school. And they got, you know, a whole range of vaccinations because it's been a long time since she's had a vaccination.
SPEAKER_00Yep.
SPEAKER_01And one of them is the HPV. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember when it first came out. Yeah. I missed it because I was too old by a few years, right? I would have been probably one of the first waves to get it, I reckon.
SPEAKER_01And so I hope you'll feel sorry for my girls when I launch into this very melodramatic, amazing monologue about how amazing that technology actually is and how privileged they should feel for getting that vaccination. Maybe it will be. I believe she rolled her eyes and said, but it's gonna hurt. And I said, But you know what? That piece of incredible science there is going to prevent 90% of all cervical cancers. That's amazing. Holy shit, balls. That is fucking amazing. And now proven because you've got the data. It's amazing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01It's amazing.
SPEAKER_00And it is amazing.
SPEAKER_01I should have done the research because I keep telling myself that Australian researchers were a massive part of discovering that.
SPEAKER_00I feel like they were, and we can come back to that one next week, I reckon. Because it's well worth unpacking. I think the HPV story is pretty phenomenal. If anybody's listening is an anti-vaxxer, that's this probably isn't the panel for you. We'd like science, and the science backs this up.
SPEAKER_01So And I'm pretty pleased that my daughters have to worry about cervical cancer a little bit less now. Yeah. Not that they're worrying about it at their age, but these are the things I think of and just go, there's some incredible people out there doing some very important work in these spaces. And most of generations to come will not even appreciate how many not only lives are being saved by this work that has happened, but also the heartache of the cancer diagnosis and going through the treatment and the families around that person and what it means. So that's my glimmer. And it really, I don't know, it it boys me a lot when I think about it. And the on top, the layer on top of that that makes me laugh even more and feel even better is the fact that I can still picture my girls rolling my eyes at me as I'm getting all excited and amazed. They'll remember it one day, though, when they're talking to their own children.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I've seen it. If I can side quest for a moment, I absolutely love that you also did a swing because that is. Do you remember that ad that was about pads? It was about menstrual pads. I am gonna link this in the show notes because if you have seen it, you deserve to see it again. If you haven't, you deserve to see it, where the bloke sticks sanitary pads all over him and he's like pretending to dodge bullets in the house, and it is so funny. I've watched it so many times, but there's lots of shwing in that. So uh we'll just put that out there for everyone's enjoyment because sometimes you need a little moment of lightness, and I think we do need a little moment of lightness.
SPEAKER_01We totally do. This was a good topic to rage on. We'd love to hear if women andor men out there have thought about this idea of meritocracy, what it means, DEI, and the gradual dismantling of it in other countries.
SPEAKER_00I think not idiocracy, which is what it feels like. No, that's building. It's going in the other direction. It's definitely what we're seeing overseas. That's it. If you want to have a conversation about the movie, come find me.
SPEAKER_01But also, I think, just as we're wrapping up as well, the importance of these conversations and drawing it into public consciousness. We need to be vigilant about these things because if we dismantle things like our, you know, special measures and equity and inclusion, yes, we miss out on all of those, you know, fantastic benefits of having diversity in our workplaces and other places as well. But it leads to other things. It's a slippery slope. It's basically saying we don't value all humans equally. And I have a real problem with that.
SPEAKER_00I do too. So which is where I was going originally before I went off on my power rant. But yes, I agree. I agree. And we are wrapping up. So we possibly will touch on this again. But I totally agree with you. I think we're all much better for hearing and involving different people, everybody being lifted up, everybody being healthier, happier, more economically free and stable. Like we should all want that as a community.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And those different kinds of wealth. And, you know, at a community day-to-day sort of level, this isn't just about the chief of the army or the prime minister. This is also about who gets elected into what positions at our local schools as well. And as a parent, advocate for children that are sitting on the fringes for whatever reason that is. So there can be that diversity in leadership positions in other positions as well. That's it from me. Ray John. Ray John.
