For years, strength has been framed as the defining trait of womanhood. Women are praised for how much we can endure, how gracefully we carry pressure and how consistently we show up without complaint. Strength has become less of a quality and more of a requirement.
But strength, when demanded rather than chosen, stops being empowering.
The expectation that women should always be strong has quietly narrowed the space for honesty. It leaves little room for fatigue, uncertainty or vulnerability. It turns resilience into a performance and silence into a survival skill. Over time, it teaches women to equate worth with endurance.
THE HIGH TOLL OF HEAVY EMOTIONAL LIFTING
International Women’s Month invites celebration, but it also should invite reflection. What would it mean to release the idea that strength is the highest form of empowerment? What if empowerment included softness, rest and the ability to admit when something is too heavy?
Many women have been applauded for surviving circumstances they should have been supported through. Burnout is often reframed as dedication. Emotional suppression is mistaken for maturity. The ability to keep going becomes the standard, even when the cost is mental, emotional or physical wellbeing.
True empowerment does not ask women to carry more. It asks whether what they are carrying is necessary at all.
WHAT EMPOWERMENT REALLY LOOKS LIKE
Empowerment can look like boundaries rather than balance. It can look like stepping back instead of stepping up. It can look like choosing sustainability over sacrifice. These choices are often quieter than traditional markers of success, but they are no less powerful.
There is also no universal blueprint for empowered womanhood. For some, empowerment is leadership and visibility. For others, it is healing, privacy, or recalibration. Women’s lives are shaped by culture, responsibility and circumstance, and empowerment must be flexible enough to honor those differences.
STRENGTH DOES NOT EQUAL WORTHINESS
Women are allowed to evolve beyond the versions of themselves that survived. Growth does not always mean expansion. Sometimes it means refinement. Sometimes it means release.
As we observe International Women’s Day this month, perhaps the most radical message is also the right one: Women do not have to be strong to be worthy. They do not have to endure to be admired. They do not have to carry everything to be empowered.
Strength may still have its place — but it does not have to be the price of womanhood.