The exhaustion of being told to be braver in a system that punishes bravery

I was sitting in a pub years ago discussing work and comparing notes with my friends about being a woman in a male-dominated field. One of them, expecting twins, said something that left me confused at the time. 

We were discussing how demoralising — and honestly, soul-crushing at times — the normalisation of ‘casual’ misogyny had become, when he said: ‘when I have my twin girls, I am going to teach them that they can achieve anything they want and nobody can stop them or tell them otherwise.’ 

‘How wonderful’, I thought. A supportive parent is paramount for every child. 

And then something shifted. Not dramatically — just a quiet erasure. Like I had been speaking and mid-sentence the room had simply moved on. Like my experience — the very thing we had just been talking about, openly, passionately — had become background noise to someone else's hopeful future. I was still there. But I wasn't quite real anymore. 

I followed the impulse to shrink. Became quiet. Affirmed his good intentions.

Empowering someone towards bravery and confidence in a system that is designed to keep them disempowered, or at the very least, designed without them in mind.

Now I know what that feeling was. Blame. 

I know he genuinely wanted to instil confidence in his daughters. And I know he wasn't intending to imply that the discrimination a woman experiences is her responsibility.

Yet he did. 

Individual empowerment matters. But it’s futile if the system itself doesn’t change alongside it.

Without systemic change, individual empowerment doesn't liberate — it just relocates the responsibility. 

And now years later, I am still thinking about those twin girls. Whether they’ll grow up thinking that it’s their fault.

Their own personal failure that, as women, they’re up to 73% more likely to suffer serious injury in a car accident — because safety features were designed for male anatomy. That the medication they’ve been prescribed was never properly researched in women. 

Would he feel guilty for not empowering them enough when they don't get that promotion? Or would any of them consider that she had to already demonstrate a proven track record of success at the role she was aiming for — while still fulfilling every duty of her current one — as her male counterparts got promoted on potential alone. 

Would they all believe that if only they’d been more confident, none of that would still be true.

There is a different question we could be asking. Not: how do we help her navigate this? But: what are we building, and for whom? 

If you're navigating something like this — in your own life or within your organisation — you're welcome to get in touch.

Sources: Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS); NIH Office of Research on Women's Health; McKinsey & LeanIn.Org, Women in the Workplace 

Photo by Ricky Esquivel