On thriving as a woman in the workplace
What does it mean to be a woman at work?
When I was in university, I heard the rumours of a gender pay gap in the corporate world. That men get promoted faster than women. Women’s opinions are not valued as much, even if they are more qualified or have more experience than their male colleagues. People said that companies are reluctant to hire women with plans to start families.
I didn’t believe the rumours and the voices of thousands of women online speaking about their experiences in the corporate workplace. People called the women who spoke their truth “attention-seekers”, or they were “out for money”. Once, a disgruntled guy at a barbeque announced: “You wanted the right to work like men, and now that you see how difficult it is, you’re complaining.”
Like an ostrich, I buried my head in the sand, dismissing these issues as a by-product of being human. There’s always hatred, bias and indifference to suffering. That’s just how it is, I thought. No one saves an antelope from being eaten by a wild cat in the savannah. My only job is to stay alive and survive.
Survival was good enough for me. Until I was no longer surviving.
Depression began coagulating in me when I left university and entered the world everyone had been speaking about. In a matter of months, my opinions, thoughts and feelings went from intuitive to meaningless. Voicing my opinion was seen as an interruption. My ideas were ignored. When a male colleague of mine repeated, almost verbatim, the very idea I had come up with minutes before, the team was suddenly amazed at how incredible “his” idea was. They proactively jotted down “his” thoughts and made moves to make it a reality. Calendar invites, lively discussions, affirmative nods and generous pats on the back for “his” hard work. I let it slide. I’m a graduate, I thought, I probably need to earn my stripes.
Little did I know that being ignored is a persistent, harrowing part of being a woman in many workplaces. Being ignored is subtle enough that there’s nothing to complain about. When you complain, you’re “looking for attention”. Annoying. Unheard and ignored again. No one seems to notice the issue, not even other women. Being ignored starts small and abstractly, with speech and ideas. Too often, it spreads to bigger issues, like ignoring outcries from physical and emotional abuse.
Being ignored is like being paralysed from anaesthetic, unable to move or speak while feeling every prick of a needle, every gliding scalpel cutting your flesh, as surgeons perform surgery, unaware of your awareness.
As a result of feeling so unheard, inadequacy swallowed me whole, and I couldn’t see my way out of the dark bowels of self-doubt. The world was successfully gaslighting me to believe mediocrity was my destiny.
“What’s normal for a woman in our culture is to inhabit inadequacy, not divinity.” - Regena Thomashauer, “Pussy”.
It was frustrating, cruel and confusing to be patronised so openly because my mother is a force of nature. I grew up in her wake, as she charged the seas of life’s uncertainty and sailed it with independence, success and profound strength. Over her lifetime, she’s built her empire by herself. Through her spiritual work, she empowers thousands to live their best lives, reconnect with their true selves, and reach impossible heights of wisdom, peace and strength. She’s supported orphanages, shelters, and food banks for impoverished children in South Africa. No one can ignore her, shake her resolve, or crush her will to positively impact the world. Every year for Father’s Day, I give my mother a gift to commemorate the double duty she’s pulled all these years as a single mother. She always inspired me - if she could triumph so could I.
I’m not my mother. I’ll never be successful. I’m a failure. If everyone else ignores my intuition, maybe I can’t trust it. Maybe I can only trust what others have to say about me.
You don’t have to be a psychiatrist to recognise a detrimental narrative. Nevertheless, I believed this narrative wholeheartedly and paid the highest price: my time, energy and life force. I was lost at sea.
So lost that survival became an option, not a necessity.
What could save me now?
As a last resort, I decided to stop ignoring myself. I pulled my head from the sand and paid attention to what women had been talking about all this time. I confronted the difficult reality that I didn’t fit into the box made for me. What “woman” means to our society became horrifically clear and unsustainable to wear under my skin. To save my sanity and escape from the prison of a ditsy, absent-minded pseudo-woman I had to ask:
What does being a woman mean to me?
Being a woman is not a sentence to be served. It is not obedience, sweetness, passivity, or waiting my turn. To me, “woman” means beauty, confidence, empathy, power and agency. Being a woman means having the capacity to achieve greatness, love deeply, and create immeasurably.
It’s terrifying to listen to myself and embrace my identity as a woman. Refusing to be ignored means I need to speak. For too long, speaking wasn’t an option. Speaking means standing up for myself, ruffling feathers, and cracking the bubbly facade required for likeability. Many concluded that speaking would make it difficult for me to land another job.
But I don’t want a job that won’t hire me because I am not sweet, nice, or quiet and because I do as I’m told. I don’t deserve to be ignored. No one does.
Maria Sakkari became the number one female tennis player in 2023. In the following interview, she was asked: “What do you say to the haters?”, she replied:
“It’s not very ladylike, but I say fuck them. I don’t give a fuck.”
This is the energy so many women have lost along the way, including myself. I am not ladylike. I am a woman. To be a woman is to honour femininity. To honour the strong intuitions that free us from the cold logic and reason we’ve come to embrace as “better”. Even when those intuitions show you truths that seem impossible to face, you can face them.
Because a woman is beautiful, brave and powerful. What does being a woman mean to you?
