The myth of meritocracy: life is rarely fair

Or why, in a fairer world, Fatima's next job could be whatever she wants it to be.

This piece of mine has been simmering for a while. But the now-infamous Fatima ad had it boiling over sharpish. Not least because I recognised some truth in the ad: it isn’t easy for those creatives whose circumstances can’t support their artistic freedom. 

Lynn Steger Strong, writing in The Guardian, puts it perfectly: “There is nothing more sustaining to long-term creative work than time and space – these things cost money – and the fact that some people have access to it for reasons that are often outside of their control continues to create an ecosystem in which the tenor of the voices that we hear from most often remains similar.” 

Because of the families they’re born into, some people simply have more opportunities than others for their voices to be heard. And, channeling my inner toddler, that’s just not fair. As Professor Kathleen Lynch points out in her opinion piece for The Journal, Ireland is as class divided as the UK or France, even if we pretend otherwise. 

“When students ask me for advice with regard to how to ‘make it as a writer’,” Lynn Steger Strong writes, “I tell them to get a job that also gives them time and space somehow to write.”

And so maybe that’s why new ways of working - like the growing trend towards initiatives like the 4-day-week - feel like such cause for celebration to me. Six months after changing jobs, my company switched to a 4-day-week. On Fridays, I make stuff. But, because I haven’t “given up the day-job”, there isn’t any financial pressure on my creative activities. (I am just a whisker away from my first kids’ book deal, though, so perhaps my precious Fridays are about to pay-off financially as well as mentally.)  

The Someday Experiment - the brainchild of Kunal Gupta - is a company-wide case study in making Fridays matter: “Think of the many mental lists that we create, “someday, I will…”. The sad truth is that “someday” may never come for most of us. I have been inspired to experiment with how to make space for “someday”, today. The Someday Experiment is a move to a four day work week. This is not simply a 3 day weekend. It is not an extra day off, but rather the space to be intentional.”

And if you’re lucky enough to be working for such a forward-thinking company? Don’t get in your own way. Life isn’t fair. Meritocracy is a myth. But John Williams is absolutely right: You don’t need to wait for anyone’s permission anymore. “(There’s been) a revolutionary shift of power to the individual. Yet too few of us are taking advantage of it. We’ve been handed the most powerful toolbox in history and yet many of us still use it for nothing more than retweeting other people’s ideas and LOLing around on Facebook.”

So what would you like your next job to be?