There are very few women online who empower other women. Most of them talk in a way that comforts women and keeps them where they are or even victimizes them. But when you think about it, there are so many male creators out there calling out men and telling them to get better. In fact, that’s most of the content I end up reading and watching since there’s almost no women doing it.
What I hear a lot from the women I know, but also in the traditional media or on social media, is that women are behind because of the patriarchy (are women really behind, though? I’ll come back to that). It’s the patriarchy’s fault, it’s men’s fault, it’s the fault of corrupted and sexist politicians, or it’s the fault of big greedy companies. Pick your villain.
Many women see the world through a lens of grievance, resentment, and anger. And they move through the world in a defensive and hostile way. Ready to blame everyone else for their struggle. I can understand why. It’s very easy and appealing to blame the patriarchy or the “system” (whatever that means) for your failures or inadequacies.
It is very easy to think that we didn’t get the job because the manager is a sexist man rather than acknowledging we fell short. It is very easy to think that we’re paid less than our male coworker because our society favors more male workers. Instead of acknowledging it’s maybe because we didn’t ask for the raise during our annual review as he did.
It’s easy to blame the patriarchy because it gives us an easy answer for everything. It’s an easy target to pinpoint.
But let me tell you why the patriarchy explanation often falls short.
First of all, it can be totally false. How do we know we didn’t get the job because of a bias against women? There are a million things that can explain why we didn’t get a job we wanted. Just because the hiring manager is a man doesn’t mean he discarded us because he’s sexist.
Maybe we didn’t have the skills or the experience. Maybe we were not confident when we were speaking. Or maybe it has nothing to do with us at all. Maybe they decided not to pursue hiring anymore. That happened to me one time. At the last minute, they told me they didn’t get the funds they hoped for. Maybe they hired someone who was recommended to them. Maybe they preferred another person just because they’d match the vibe of the team better. At my old job, I was the head of the legal team. And in my team, we were all young, between 25 and 30 years old. I did many interviews, and although some people were qualified, we preferred younger people to match the rest of the team. So there are many things hiring managers take into consideration that we don’t even think about.
I also want to debunk the myth that women are discriminated against in the workplace or in education, and that it would be the reason why women are less successful.
Women have overtaken men in many educational measures. In 2024, the U.S. Census reported that 40.1% of women age 25+ had a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared with 37.1% of men. Among employed women, BLS reported that 49.0% of employed women had a bachelor’s or higher in 2024 versus 41.3% of employed men.
And in the workplace, a 2025 U.S. meta-analysis of 37 audit studies and 243,202 fictitious applications found no statistically significant gender discrimination overall. What they did find was a strong variation by occupation: gender composition predicts who gets favored. Men are favored in male-dominated fields and women are favored in female-dominated fields. It comes down to what I was saying: hiring managers just think that a woman will be integrated better into a women’s team and vice versa.
I don’t understand where people see women’s oppression in Western societies. Don’t we have the same opportunities? What are the mechanisms in place today that prevent women from being successful? Can’t women climb the corporate ladder, start a business, or learn how to invest?
We cannot act like we still live 100 years ago and pretend we don’t have the same opportunities today. We can’t pretend that there’s still some kind of mystery force holding women back and preventing them from achieving what they want.
But anyway, let’s say yes, some women are not hired because of a prejudice against women (which we’ll never know, but let’s just pretend). What do you gain by blaming other people, the patriarchy, or the system? How is that useful?
Blaming something else for our failures doesn’t solve the problem. It’s not useful. It just keeps us stuck and makes us angry and resentful. It makes us lose our agency over our own life. It protects our ego in the moment. It protects us from responsibility. And it temporarily releases us from guilt. That’s why it feels good. But long-term, we lose one of the most important beliefs for success, which is: I am responsible for what happens to me.
Second, it keeps us in a forever victim state. And victimhood can harden into identity and personality. If you adopt the victimhood mentality, you don’t just notice unfairness, but you begin to anticipate it, and you interpret everything that happens to you through that lens. You begin to see yourself as a victim in every interaction. You assume the worst about other people’s motives. So situations involving normal criticism, ordinary conflict, or human flaws become automatically interpreted as hostility, harm, or humiliation directed towards you on purpose.
Many women do that. They interpret everything men do as male malice. Instead of acknowledging they experienced unfairness, they start believing that they experienced unfairness only because they’re a woman.
The reason why we’re comfortable viewing ourselves as victims is that it feels good. It brings attention, sympathy, identity, and a self-justifying narrative that we don’t want to give up.
But I want to challenge you. When that thought comes to mind — that you have it less easy because you’re a woman — I want you to ask yourself: what belief serves my future self better? Believing that everyone is against you and that society oppresses you because you’re a woman, or thinking that you have a million possibilities in this world and that you can decide your future?
Because at the end of the day, everyone has it hard for something: growing up poor, being from a minority, being in foster care, being from a bad neighbourhood, having divorced parents, suffering from substance abuse, and so on. Everyone has their reasons. We all suffered some kind of prejudice. No one is special. We all get hit in life.
But the most important thing is how you react to the hit. That’s gonna define how you live your life: as a victim or as someone with agency. Do you weaponize the pain and use it as an excuse, or do you use it as a foundation for something great?
If you let your circumstances demoralize you and make you bitter and resentful, that’s a failure on your part. I really like this sentence, and I keep it in my mind all the time:
It’s not your fault, but it’s your responsibility.
You have more power than you can possibly imagine. And if you face things with courage and responsibility, that’s the path to a great life.