"There are fewer women etc. in large part due to systemic issues that we don't address by pretending they aren't there. "

I'm not pretending these issues aren't there, just arguing their complete irrelevance to the concept of meritocracy.

To say tech is not a meritocracy is to say that there are women who should be working in tech, but are getting turned away at the door - who are these women, and where are they? If these women do exist....that's a great argument against the tech meritocracy, but also a great argument against many of the other arguments regarding 'systemic issues'. It implies that there are less other factors limiting a woman's potential in tech, since women are getting the skills/education, just not getting the jobs. 

So which is it?
 
To say it's both is suggesting that women are so good that they overcome all societal barriers to be better than men, yet still don't get hired/funded (and are  not quite good enough to create the next big app in their basement)