Hijacking Empowerment – Or Where We Fail as Women

Here is a topic ?we don’t speak about openly enough: women empowerment.?

Every organization dedicated to supporting women achieve equal rights and parity in economic and social roles leads with this idea: empowerment.?

But what are they really talking about??

What many organizations talk about when they pull out the magic word empowerment is creating loads and loads of programs that are aimed to fix what women haven’t been receiving for millennia: recognition, support, education, guidance, encouragement to follow and fulfill their whole human potential beyond raising kids etc. ??

But here is the trick: most of these organizations are non-governmental.

This means that they take funds from elsewhere than clients – from the state, the public budget, donors – to fix social evils. So, they take the money and they design and provide programs to women for free.?

This is how one of the greatest evils of our time is born, an evil we still refuse to recognize and address head-on: entitlement.?

Why Is Entitlement So Bad for Women?

Mind you, there is nothing wrong with providing free support for people who really, really need it. Abused women, victims of domestic violence, people living in poverty where all they need is a real chance…?

Yes, by all means – let’s channel more funds and support towards these disheartened fellow human beings.?

But could there be something wrong with providing endless support to companies and to people who make tens of thousands of euro per year or per month FOR FREE??

I see two monumental problems with this approach.?

The first one is economic, the other one is psychological.?

I’ll start with the economic argument.

Basically, what happens today is that we pay taxes (most of us) that go to the public budget. In Europe, some of this money goes to the common Union budget, returning back to the countries with poorer economic status under the form of EU funds.?

Again - nothing wrong with EU funds when invested in the right things. But when EU funds are used to support commercial companies to train their staff, something any company with half a brain should know IT’S AN ECONOMIC AND COMMERCIAL PRIORITY, this is when things go wrong.?

Why??

Because basically my taxpayer’s money is sent to Brussels to come back and fund my corporate clients who then hire crappy trainers for menial budgets to deliver crappy development programs that bore people to death and have no long-term impact.

Essentially I, the founder of a people and organization development company, when I pay taxes I am basically funding my competition – and a crappy one, that is.

This is an ethical dilemma. But the entitlement issue goes beyond ethics.?

The problem with this approach is that the existence of poorly distributed public / EU funds creates ENTITLEMENT in corporate organizations.

I know many companies that wouldn’t invest one euro from their own budget into their people; instead, they prefer to wait for the next wave of EU funds to even consider a development program even as they milk the bejesus out of those people very people they are supposed to support and upskill. ??

Is this fair??

No.?

We wanted empowerment and what we get in exchange is a crap-load of entitlement. Entitlement - the other side of the coin, the shadow of all honorable intentions that we refuse to see and examine for fear of what that would say to us and about us. ?

And now to the psychological argument.

Throughout evolution, women were dependent on men (most of the time). When the man went out to chase and the woman remained in the cave with their offsprings, it was vital that the man returned home with the pray or the woman and her kids would starve to death. ??

So, the woman had all the interest for the man to come back, but not only to come back - to come back TO HER and TO HER KIDS, aka to park the freshly hunted mammoth in her cave and not in the next-door cave of the prettier neighbor.?

To secure this safe return, women developed endless mechanisms of male attraction back to their cave:

1.????? Good recipes to cook that mammoths (better than hers, that dirty neighbor ??).

2.????? A clean cave (at least take out the snakes and the bats).

3.????? Safe kids with a chance to grow and mature (too early to talk about well behaved).

4.????? A soft, freshly smelling bed for the man to rest his tired bones after a tough day.

And so on and so forth.

You get my point.

To secure their survival, women invested their very existence into attracting back the cave man. They did everything – absolutely everything – to lure him back, because their very existence and the existence of their offsprings depended on it. And in doing so, women built a solid defense mechanism: “I do all this so I DESERVE you to come back.”

?“I deserve you to come back.”

This is how the green-eyed monster was born. This is entitlement at its best. Sure, raised on a background of existential fear – but entitlement, nonetheless.

This was true millennia ago. But are we really that far from these emotional patterns today?

What I notice, in fact, is that many women keep investing most of their lives into proving their men they deserve their return. They grow up believing that having a traditional family is the only option, that kids are the light of one’s existence, that every woman should have kids, that women should look young and fresh until they go to the grave…

And then they take this s**t and project it onto other women, too.

Heck, we have entire industries that are grounded in this mindset.

This is how entitlement becomes weaponized – against other women who might want to break free from this pattern – and against entire generations.

Last but not least, there is one more way entitlement hijacks human growth.

In their battle to prove themselves worthy of the male return, women are all over the place on kids: planning their schedules and becoming to the minute, driving them around, putting everything else on the side, never finding time for anything else, essentially making sure their kids are the living embodiment of their domestic success.

Same goes for household management. In this equation, picking up the adult man’s socks scattered on the floor becomes an act of sacrifice, all done in the name of: “Can you see how good I am with you? Can you see how much I do? Can you see, in fact, how much I DESERVE from you?”?

Subtle, hidden entitlement. The most toxic version of it there is. Because this toxic, hidden, subtle entitlement kills self-agency and empowerment in others – particularly in men and young boys.

Perverse, isn’t it? By enabling, by keeping men eternal boys we secure their emotional and household dependency on us.

This is how we make sure they come home. This is how, in fact, we secure we survive.

In a nutshell: even though we haven’t been living in cages for centuries, our survival strategies for navigating the world today are not that new. Our inner mental and emotional patterns are dusty and outdated, and they could really, really use a proper shake-up.?

So, What’s the Solution, You Ask? ?

The first step towards a real solution is for women to take the mirror – yup, that one – and to take a good, hard look in it.?

To really, really see themselves beyond the wrinkles and the need to add more make-up – perhaps for the very first time.?

As you look at yourself, ask yourself: Why am I really doing this? Why am I REALLY doing this??

For whom and what am I sacrificing myself? And what do I expect in return??

Am I honest, open, and transparent about my expectations? Or are they left behind, hidden, lurking in the background as a menace for the man who could lose everything if I stop??

The first step, lovely women, is to turn your focus inwards – again, in many cases, ?perhaps for the first time. And to become monumentally raw and honest with ourselves.

It is only when we see the green-eyed monster called entitlement lurking in the background behind our apparently innocent sacrifice that the real change starts to happen – in us and around us.?

That’s the moment of real empowerment – the moment when you see and you decide to own your own strength.?

This is something NO ONE can give you – no NGO, no free webinar, no guru-like yoga-pants teacher. YOU empower YOU – by seeing you and by being very, very honest with yourself.?

Because the next step is even more painful and risky.?

You see, true empowerment comes with a price tag.

That price is the need to take full responsibility for your life and for all that matters in it to you.?

No more waiting for the cave man to return. If you so choose, you are able to take the God damn spear, go out, and hunt your own mammoths.?

Or not.?

But you have a choice. A real one.?

Perhaps for the very first time.?

Wouldn’t that be nice for a change??

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