Blog

I Proved My Merit. I Still Needed Equity

There is a line that I hear often in professional conversations.

That equity and merit are in tension. That fairness and standards cannot coexist. Or that if we focus on access, we must be lowering the bar.

This framing does more than simplify a complex issue. It creates false binaries that protect the system from being examined.

I understand why these ideas persist. They are comforting. They suggest the system is neutral, that outcomes reflect ability, and that success or failure is largely a personal story.

My own career tells a different one.

The Myth of the Level Playing Field

When I entered the veterinary profession as a new graduate, I was not just learning how to diagnose and treat patients. I was also learning how to survive a profession that was not built with someone like me in mind.

I am profoundly deaf.

That meant fighting for captioning just to access lectures.

It meant at times being shut out of informal conversations where learning and belonging happen quietly, between cases and after rounds.

It meant navigating microaggressions that questioned whether I should be in the profession at all.

It meant finding, funding, and maintaining adaptive technology largely on my own. While also working in a system that treated that as an exception rather than a baseline.

None of that had anything to do with clinical ability. All of it shaped whether my ability could be seen.

What “Merit” Looked Like Anyway

Despite those barriers, my career followed a path that most professions would recognise as “high achievement.”

I graduated with honours.

I completed a two-year internship in small animal medicine and surgery.

I obtained two MANZCVS qualifications.

I became a practice partner in a group of four clinics for a decade.

I upskilled in orthopaedics, chemotherapy, and cardiac ultrasound.

I mentored new graduates and helped shape the next generation of clinicians.

By any conventional measure, I met the standard. I exceeded it.

And still, I needed equity.

The Part of the System We Pretend Doesn’t Exist

This is where the merit versus equity framing quietly falls apart.

It assumes merit is assessed in a neutral space, that everyone arrives at the starting line with roughly the same access to information, safety, support, and visibility. But in real workplaces, a great deal of sorting happens long before performance is ever evaluated.

• Who feels safe asking for what they need.

• Who gets included in informal learning and decision-making.

• Who is read as “difficult” rather than “dedicated.”

• Who has to spend energy just to stay in the room, instead of using that energy to excel.

That invisible layer shapes who gets seen as capable, committed, or leadership material. By the time someone’s merit is judged, the system has already done much of the judging.

Equity is not the Opposite of Merit

I did not need equity to reach the standard. I had already exceeded it. What I needed equity for was to reduce the unnecessary friction that was draining time, energy, and focus away from my actual work.

• Captioning, so I could access the same education as my peers.

• Adaptive technology, so I could communicate in fast-paced clinical environments.

• Leaders who were willing to ask what I needed, rather than whether I belonged.

None of that made me more capable than someone else. It simply stopped the system from quietly draining my energy away.

Merit is about what someone can contribute. Equity is about whether the system allows that contribution to surface.

Equity didn’t give me an advantage. It gave me my time and energy back. It removed avoidable friction in the system that was consuming capacity I could have spent on contribution, learning, and leadership.

When I did not have it, I burned out under the combined weight of cognitive load and the constant effort to maintain excellence. That burnout was not mild. I once fell asleep at the wheel with my family in the car and woke just in time to avoid a crash.

That moment clarified something for me. This is not only about fairness. It is about safety. Equity made me less tired.

The Friction that Steals More than Time

When I speak with veterinary students who live with disability, neurodivergence, chronic illness, or other marginalised identities, I hear a strikingly similar story.

They are not just learning medicine. They are learning how to navigate the system. They talk about filling out forms, chasing approvals, and self-advocating in every new class, rotation, or placement. They describe deciding when to disclose and when to stay silent. They carry the quiet social cost of always being “the one who needs something.”

By graduation, they have already proven their merit. They have met the academic and clinical standards the profession sets. What many did not get to experience in the same way as their peers was ease and belonging. The informal learning and social connection that often shape professional identity as much as any exam.

Equity would not have given them their capability. It could have given them back time, energy, and joy that were quietly consumed by friction.

There is something deeply troubling about a profession that people enter already tired, not because they could not meet what was asked of them, but because unnecessary barriers were placed in their way.

The Meritocracy Myth in Internships and Residency Training

Nowhere does the merit versus equity binary appear more confident than in internship and residency selection. These pathways are often experienced as strong affirmations of merit and standards by those who move through them.

Having completed an internship myself, I recognise both the rigour of these pathways and the less visible conditions that shape who is able to enter and persist within them.

Yet many who have made it through have also spoken to me about how much harder it is for women, those with caregiving roles, lower socioeconomic backgrounds, or disability to pursue these pathways. These views are backed by research, especially in medical fields.

Successful navigation of many training pathways often requires the following:

• The ability to take on low-paid or unpaid placements.

• Geographic mobility and the financial security to relocate.

• Time flexibility that assumes no caregiving or access needs.

• Informal sponsorship from people who already know how the system works.

• Personal comfort in navigating professional networks that were not designed for everyone.

By the time selection panels talk about merit, they are often looking at the outcome of accumulated access, not just individual capability. For candidates living with disability, chronic illness, neurodivergence, or limited financial resources, these expectations are not neutral. They carry a higher cost.

When systems reward who can give the most time, flexibility, and personal sacrifice, they are not only selecting for clinical ability. They are selecting for the capacity to absorb friction and risk. That is not the same thing as merit.

The Quiet Sorting Function

Residency and internship pathways often function as a gate. Not only into advanced clinical roles, but into leadership, academia, and influence within the profession.

When access to those pathways depends on conditions that are unevenly distributed, the profession quietly shapes who gets to become an expert, a specialist, or a decision-maker.

Over time, this affects not just individual careers, but the culture and priorities of the profession itself.

What Professions Lose When They Misunderstand This

When we frame equity as a threat to standards, we miss what exclusion actually costs. We lose clinicians who are tired of fighting just to participate. We lose students who decide, quietly, that this profession is not for people like them. We lose perspectives that could have made our teams safer, more adaptive, and more resilient.

And then we tell ourselves there is a workforce shortage, or a retention crisis, or a wellbeing problem, without noticing how many people we filtered out before they ever had a chance to stay.

From Individual Success Stories to Systemic Safety

One person’s success does not prove a system is fair. My story certainly does not.

If anything, it shows how much effort it can take to survive it.

The question equity work asks is not, “Can someone make it through anyway?” It is, “Why should they have to?”

That is not a values question. It is a design question.

A Different Definition of Excellence

What would it mean to define excellence not as who can endure the most, but as who can contribute the most once unnecessary barriers are removed?

What would it look like to design workplaces where people do not need extraordinary resilience just to demonstrate ordinary competence?

This is where equity and merit stop being opposites and start being connected.

When access is treated as baseline rather than exception, something shifts. People spend less energy surviving and more energy contributing.

Teams retain talent that would otherwise leave quietly. Leadership pipelines become broader, not because standards changed, but because visibility did.

That is not an inclusion outcome. It is a professional one.

The Long View

The future of any profession will not be shaped by which side of a false binary it chooses.

It will be shaped by whether it is willing to redesign the system that created the binary in the first place.

It can continue to celebrate the few who succeed despite the system. Or it can redesign the system so success is not an act of endurance.

Professions do not lose talent by accident. They lose it through the systems they choose to keep.