Editorial Update: What Happens When Women Realise "Culture" Was Never Theirs

There’s a whispered question floating through today’s conversations: Have women really changed — or have we simply become aware that the culture around us was never built for us in the first place?

Because culture isn’t some mystical force that appeared out of nowhere. It’s a construct — designed, maintained, and largely male in its architecture. For centuries, women were expected to live within it, not question it. But now that we’re questioning everything — from who defines “power” to who decides what’s “normal” — the realisation hits differently: perhaps it was never women who needed to change, but the culture itself.

The invention of the contraceptive pill is often seen as a feminist milestone — the moment women gained control over their own bodies. It allowed women to delay motherhood, pursue education, and build careers. It cracked open doors that had been sealed shut for centuries.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: even liberation came packaged within a culture that still measures value through productivity, availability, and compliance. Women were suddenly “free” — but only as long as that freedom served the system. The working woman became a symbol of progress, yet the structure of work itself didn’t evolve to support her. We were handed the keys, yes — but to a car still designed by men.

So, did the pill liberate women, or did it just make us more manageable?

Until very recently, women’s sanitary products were taxed as luxury items. Let that sink in. The natural biological function that allows for human reproduction was treated as an indulgence — as though women were out here buying tampons for sport.

This is culture at its most absurd: when the male body is considered the default, anything pertaining to women becomes “extra.” We don’t question it because we were raised inside it. For centuries, women’s biology was something to be silenced, hidden, or sanitised.

When campaigners like Laura Coryton fought for the removal of the tampon tax, it wasn’t just about economics. It was a symbolic protest — against the quiet ways women’s needs have been belittled, taxed, and politicised. The moment a woman’s body became taxable, it became clear who still writes the rules.

Yes, women are working. We’re leading companies, creating empires, changing policies. But we’re still expected to do so within the same structures that excluded us for generations. We’ve been told to “lean in,” to “hustle harder,” to “have it all.” Yet the system remains rooted in a masculine ideal of power — one that prizes dominance, endurance, and detachment.

Women enter the workforce and adapt. We learn the language of ambition, the rhythm of authority, the choreography of leadership. But here’s the real question: did we infiltrate the system, or did the system simply absorb us — rebranding our inclusion as progress while keeping its foundations intact?

As the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg once said, “Women belong in all places where decisions are being made. It shouldn’t be that women are the exception.”
And yet, we’re still asking for a seat at the table instead of redesigning the room.

Here’s where the conversation turns.

There’s growing talk about the “male loneliness epidemic.” Statistics show that men are more isolated, more disconnected, and more likely to take their own lives. We are told to feel sorry for them — to re-soften ourselves, to make space for their pain. And yet, one can’t help but notice the irony.

If there were no men in the world, women would not need to fear walking home at night. We would not clutch our keys, text our friends that we got home safe, or measure our tone to avoid being labelled “difficult.” The question writes itself: if men disappeared tomorrow, who exactly would we need to be safe from?

That’s not bitterness — that’s clarity. Women have always held more power than we were allowed to realise. We have been conditioned to think our safety, our stability, our purpose, are all dependent on men — on the very system that profits from our subservience.

For centuries, women were told that we belonged in kitchens, in care work, in service. But these weren’t truths — they were tools. Tools to maintain a world that depends on women’s compliance while fearing their autonomy.

Maybe women haven’t changed — maybe we’ve simply remembered who we were before culture told us who to be.

We are no longer seeking permission to exist within systems that weren’t built for us. We are creating new blueprints — where leadership looks like empathy, where success includes rest, where love isn’t possession but partnership.

Culture may have been a male invention, but evolution will not be.

The shift we’re witnessing isn’t just social. It’s spiritual. Women are no longer asking to be included in the story — we are writing a new one.

Because if awareness is the revolution, then sisterhood is the strategy. And when women collectively realise that we were never the supporting cast — we were always the narrative — the world will finally understand what real change looks like.