It think that articles like these are celebrating the institution itself, rather than the individual's achievement. In particular, this paragraph stands out:
> Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer called the appointment "historic" at a time "when the work of our intelligence services has never been more vital".
When an institution faces challenges, you need a competent and bold individual at the helm. Not someone from a specific demographic group. I'm certain that Ms. Metreweli fits the bill, since this hers one of the rare jobs where the professional skills align with the personal skills required to climb up the organization hierarchy. But the statement itself seems to emphasize that the MI6 achieved something. A declaration of "we are progressive too".
The article itself says more about MI6 and C's duties, rather than about Ms. Blaise Metreweli. Granted that this is one job where the personal achievements cannot be divulged beyond a limit. But then, the article could be equally brief. This is a common pattern. Such stories use the achievements of these remarkable individuals to advertise the job instead.
In the defense such article, there is one meaningful purpose that they serve. It may attract the attention of girls and women who are a good match for the job, but may not have considered it otherwise. It also gives them the reassurance that their career growth won't be limited by their gender. That's not a bad deal in my opinion.
It feels a bit too close to "lets only choose people like we did the last hundreds of years" when noone batted an eye if some man got chosen. If you didn't comment "but did they really check this mans credentials and merits" every time MI6 gets a new boss, then it feels a bit odd to do it only now, don't you think?
"So the scientists compared the ratings of the top hundred male and top hundred female players from Germany. And they found that the men indeed outperformed the women. However that difference can be almost entirely explained by statistics. Because the larger the population, the wider the range of measured scores—the bell curve has a longer tail. And because many more men play than women, the best male players are extreme outliers on that bell curve. As more women play, a few should also reach those extremes, right out there with the men. To which one might be tempted to say: Checkmate."
Keep in mind that many women and girls have been socially conditioned to believe this type of job is not for them. Headlines like this can be inspirational in pushing back against this conditioning.
Specifically, it’s another milestone for the British intelligence and security community - one that Stella Rimington made in 1996 at MI5 and Anne Keast-Butler made in 2023 at GCHQ.
Also, this sort of thing goes “Notable for its absence, notable for the first, no longer really notable at all”. It’s hard to have the last one without the middle.