Removing diversity quotas and addressing the wage gap (which you seem to oppose, but it’s probably because you’re just listing trigger words) doesn’t make for a meritocracy and it’s been shown over and over again.

In controlled conditions, when someone is completely unable to know the gender, race or sexuality of the person they’re judging, minorities have the same merit and are judged much the same as anyone else.

When you remove those conditions, suddenly, in a magical coincidence, straight white men just happen to think that other straight white men are the most qualified for the job.

On top of that, people who heard the words “diversity quotas” and assumed they knew everything about them tend to assume they’re mandatory discrimination, then get upset.

They’re not. Managers aren’t saying “well unfortunately, all these hirely qualified men aren’t eligible because the quota said, so we have to hire this black gay woman who turned up to the interview visibly drunk”.

Any job tends to have a pool of candidates, any of whom are qualified. If you’ve genuinely been hiring on merit and have ended up with an all male team, that shouldn’t be difficult to demonstrate when scrutinised.