When a woman gets a job that shatters very high ceilings, the first few words she receives are, “Don’t mess up; you’re representing all women”, or “Don’t waste this opportunity which paves the way for the next generation of women to have a seat at a table they are often excluded from”.
Perhaps she’s congratulated first, but soon after those joyous moments of celebration, she’s met with a forced sense of urgency that the world, no, the success of women, lies on her shoulders.
Of course, it’s the patriarchy which has made us all hyper-critical of a woman being in a man’s seat. But it’s also the patriarchy which makes us feel like we need to hold our breath until she succeeds.
Yet when a man screws up in a position of power, it’s not met with the same response. Not all men, right?
We live in a time when “not all men” has tried to dominate conversations, albeit a different discussion from this one. However, there seems to be a silent “not all men” code that we all live with, applying to multiple injustices around the world.
And I think there is another silent code: “all women.”
This code is used when one woman ‘messes up’ or fails at something. In those moments, we all seem grouped together, as if when one woman fails, we all do.
The true measure of progress isn’t just placing individual women in positions of power and expecting perfection. It’s breaking so many glass ceilings that a woman’s failure becomes what it should be: one person’s outcome, not a referendum on her entire gender.
Only then will we know that equality isn’t just about access but about the freedom to be imperfectly human – a privilege men have enjoyed without question.
