"I Don’t Want to Be Hired Because I’m a Woman"

About three years ago, I was at a friend’s dinner party. The conversation, as it often does, drifted from food and family into work. At one point, the host, an accomplished professional woman, spoke strongly against the EDI (equity, diversity, and inclusion) statements that employers often add to job postings. She said:

“I don’t want people to think I was chosen for a job just because I’m a woman. I want them to know it’s because I’m good.”

At first, I nodded politely. On the surface, it sounded familiar, even reasonable. Who doesn’t want their skills and hard work recognized rather than dismissed as “tokenism”? But the more I sat with her words, the more they unsettled me. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it in the moment, and it was hard to articulate exactly why.

Maybe part of it is that I was only recently hired myself. Her comment landed in a personal way, as if it cast a shadow on my own achievement. Was I “good,” or would people think I was chosen simply because I am a woman? Or maybe it was something deeper: a discomfort with the way merit and identity are so often framed as if they are in opposition. Whatever the reason, her words lingered with me, quietly demanding that I untangle them long after the dinner ended.

The first problem is the assumption that hiring is, or ever has been, a neutral process. When my friend said she wanted to be valued for being “good,” the implication was that identity and merit should be separate, that merit can be assessed in some pure, untouched way. But history and data tell a different story.

For generations, being male, and often being from the majority group, was the silent qualifier for opportunity. Jobs were passed along networks that excluded women. Evaluations of “fit” were based on male norms. And yet, when men were hired under those conditions, no one said it was because they were men. It was simply called “hiring.”

So when job postings today say things like “women and minorities are encouraged to apply,” they’re not about lowering the bar. They’re about widening the doors. Merit hasn’t disappeared, it’s just being given a chance to be seen in people who historically would have been overlooked.

I also realized that my friend’s statement reflects a very real burden many women and minorities carry: the fear that their accomplishments will be dismissed as “quota filling.” Psychologists call this stereotype threat, the anxiety of being judged through the lens of a negative stereotype. Ironically, this fear itself can erode confidence, even when someone is highly qualified.

Men, of course, are almost never asked whether they were hired because they’re men. Their gender is invisible in the conversation of merit. For women, the same identity is often treated as a qualifier that undermines legitimacy.

Here’s the crux of what I’ve come to understand: being hired as a woman and being hired because you’re good are not mutually exclusive. Women can be exceptionally qualified and bring the diversity of perspective and lived experience that institutions need. Equity policies don’t dilute ability; they acknowledge that talent exists everywhere, and that fair systems should recognize it.

That dinner conversation was three years ago, but I still think about it, especially now, having gone through my own recent hiring experience. The comment unsettled me then because it touched on something personal and something systemic all at once. It made me feel exposed in my own achievements, even as it forced me to confront the larger myth of “pure merit.”

If I could go back, I might say:

“Equity doesn’t mean you were hired because you’re a woman instead of because you’re good. It means you were hired because you are both, and the system finally allowed both to matter.”