The Trio Infernalis

Empowerment. Safe space. Healing.

The vocabulary you reach for to feel strong was built to keep you small.

There is a very specific vocabulary reserved for women. Brands empower us. Coaches create safe spaces for us. Retreats exist for our healing. All of it offered in the name of making us stronger.

Look closely, and these three words do the opposite. They do not tell us to stand tall. They tell us something is wrong with us, and that we should pay a great deal of money to get fixed. The trio infernalis, as I like to call them.

They are used only about women, rarely about men. Today I want to take them apart, one by one, and look at what we could say instead.

Empowerment

To empower someone is to assume they have no power of their own. It assumes power is something that can be handed over. In a patriarchal society, it was handed over by fathers, brothers, husbands... We changed that. Women no longer wait for male relatives to grant them standing. So language stepped in to remind us of our place by another route. Empowerment.

The word is almost impossible to avoid when you want women to know their worth. At Cheetah Stories, I banned it early, though, I am embarrassed to say it still slipped in now and then for lack of a better one. It took us a while to remove it completely.

So, ladies, let us stop letting anyone question our power by claiming they grant it. We stand in it already. Retire the word.

Gentlemen, you do not need to empower us. Treat us as equals, and that takes care of itself. The power you imagine you are handing over was never yours to give.

Safe spaces

I do not need a safe space. Give me a space, and I will speak.

I once ran a negotiation training for very senior staff. One of the organisers, a man in his late fifties, told me to host a special dinner with the women, a safe space where they could talk about the challenges of being a woman in leadership.

You should have read the subtitles on my face. My instinct was to say, with a little contempt, “Why?” He made it worse. “You know, a space where you talk about your issues.” That is when my expression gave up entirely, and I offered him a deal. I would hold a space for the women to discuss our issues, and he would hold one for the men to discuss theirs. His face was priceless.

What does that tell us? Being a woman in leadership is not always easy, and yes, it helps to talk to other women about it. But when we move those conversations into protected female-only rooms, we turn the situation into a female problem. Raise it in mixed rooms, and we begin to see what the problem actually is, how it gets built, and how we might solve it together.

And yes, Stand Tall is a community of women too. I have nothing against that. I love being among other women, and female networking is a very powerful thing. But that is not the same as being told we can only say how we feel once we are safely segregated.

Stop speaking only in female rooms. Tell the world, and the world will have to listen.

Healing

We are not broken. We are women, and there is nothing wrong with us, thank you.

Of course, trauma exists. Of course, support matters. That is not what this is about. This is about an entire industry built on the idea that the average woman in a privileged part of the world is damaged and in need of fixing.

What we need is not healing. It is clarity, self-worth, and spine.

what do we do with this?

All three words, and many more, define you by what you lack.

Empowerment: you lack power.

Safe space: you lack safety.

Healing: you lack wholeness.

Say them often enough, and you start to believe them. That is not where a woman who knows her worth begins.

So before you reach for a word about yourself, ask one question. Who does it serve? The words that keep us small almost always sound like kindness, but they are not.

Picture Credit: Jagoda Lasota