How do I even start?

Where do I even start from?

What do I even say?

Because what I’m about to say may come off as heavy, but I have to say it bluntly.

I’m beginning to get tired of International Women’s Day.

And the reason why I’m beginning to get tired of International Women’s Day is because I increasingly see it as a farce. F-A-R-C-E. A farce.

Look, this whole concept of women feeling “included” in corporate institutions, and not just corporate institutions but institutions in general worldwide, pushing the idea of:

“Oh yes, we love our women.”

“Gender inclusive policies.”

“Women empowerment.”

Blah blah blah.

It’s a lie.

It’s really a lie.

I feel like it’s just a marketing strategy for organizations.

Everybody is jumping on the bandwagon because nobody wants to look like the organization that doesn’t support women.

You don’t want people to think of you that way, so of course you’ll join in.

You’ll post the graphics.

You’ll organize the events.

You’ll wear purple.

You’ll post the hashtags.

But in reality?

That is not what is happening.

And I have seen, heard, and experienced too many things to keep pretending otherwise.

Let me give you examples.

I worked in an institution very early in my career where they employed a lot of contract staff through outsourcing agencies.

And I remember very clearly, when I joined, some people advised me:

“Make sure you don’t get pregnant.”

I was like:

“Huh?”

“What do you mean?”

At the time I was about 23 years old. This was about seven years ago.

And mind you, this is an organization people would DIE to work in in this current Ghanaian climate.

So I asked:

“Why?”

And they told me:

“If you are a contract staff and you get pregnant, the likelihood that you lose your job is high.”

I was like:

“Eh?”

“They usually don’t take them back.”

Interesting.

So if you are a contract staff and you become pregnant, suddenly your employability becomes shaky.

But if you are a contract staff and you go and impregnate somebody, life continues normally because, well, for men it’s different.

Interesting.

And till today, that same environment still exists.

But yes, every year:

“Happy International Women’s Day.”

“With our women.”

“Celebrating women.”

Marketing.

Bandwagon.

Nobody wants the public image of being an anti-woman institution, so everybody joins the celebration.

Meanwhile, the actual systems inside these institutions are saying something completely different.

I have seen.

I have heard.

I have experienced.

I worked in an organization where a woman missed promotion TWICE.

Two separate years.

And the reason given to her both times was that she had gone on maternity leave during those years.

Tell me how three months of maternity leave suddenly erases the other nine months of work somebody did in a year.

I genuinely want to understand.

And mind you, this was not even an organization where pregnant women were given breathing space.

Even if you were heavily pregnant, if you did not actively take your leave, they expected you to still show up to work.

I know women in that same organization who had miscarriages after miscarriages because of work stress.

Work stress.

But yes:

“Happy International Women’s Day.”

This same woman was denied promotion twice because she got pregnant twice in two separate years.

Three months maternity leave.

That was enough to disqualify her.

And after maternity leave in Ghana, you resume work. You even close earlier for some period when your child is still young.

Still, no promotion.

Interesting.

I have worked in an organization where, and these things I’m saying are firsthand information, not hearsay, not rumours, firsthand information, a woman came to work with locks.

And a male manager from nowhere casually called to complain about her hair.

Why had she locked her hair?

Why does she have locks?

His wife had not locked her hair.

Interesting.

Who gives a damn about your wife?

Did anybody wake up in the morning and come to the office because we care what your wife decided to do with her hair?

And this taunting continued until the lady eventually escalated the matter and reported it.

I have worked in an organization where a young man comfortably sat in another department and publicly discussed how “the ladies in his unit were not performing,” and that was why they were not being promoted.

And what was interesting to me was that another woman was sitting there listening to this nonsense comfortably.

I genuinely don’t think it is possible for a man to sit in front of me and confidently tell me:

“The women in my unit are not performing.”

and I will sit there feeling pleased with myself.

What exactly am I supposed to feel?

That I’m better than them?

Meanwhile the irony was that the women truly were not getting promoted.

Only a handful.

And interestingly, even in that unit, the men already outnumbered the women.

So the very few women there too were now being labeled as “not performing to standard.”

Then why are you pretending you care about gender balance?

Nobody gives a damn about gender balance.

Don’t pretend.

Don’t pretend.

Don’t pretend.

I have worked in an institution where a colleague of mine, though we were not in the institution at the same time, happened to share similar work experience from that same institution with me.

She was a contract worker in a department that had a manager, a team lead, and then her.

The team lead later moved to a different team altogether, so the position became vacant.

She had worked with him for a long time and knew the ins and outs of that team.

And the manager openly said, to the hearing of several people, that he was not going to employ a woman into that position because he did not want to employ a woman who would go and get pregnant and then go on maternity leave when he needed work to be done.

Wow.

That’s very, very interesting.

So instead, he employed somebody completely clueless.

And then had the audacity to tell my colleague that SHE should train him.

Imagine being told to train somebody to become your team lead.

A clueless person.

Your team lead.

I have worked in an institution where a very excellent and outstanding woman was leaving for further studies, and we all gathered in a room to say goodbye to her.

And one manager, the same one I referred to in my previous posts, stood up and told this woman that he prayed that as she went abroad to study, she would meet a man who would “match her boot for boot” so that she would learn to calm down and relax.

Interesting.

The stories and examples I have are one too many.

And they still continue.

I know of an institution where somebody in a very key position in the organization was sleeping with his colleague’s daughter.

The stories can go on and on.

The stories can go on and on.

And honestly, what annoys me the most in all this are the women who enable these systems.

In fact, the women who enable this behavior are scarier than the men.

Scarier than the men.

I have worked in an organization where they said there was a women’s group organizing a program for ladies.

They gathered all of them in a room and could not discuss anything strategic about our future.

Nothing.

But they were able to create a program title and include the word “grooming” in it.

PersonalGrooming.

And for me, in this present age and time, it is very tone deaf to still comfortably use the word “grooming” around women like that.

You must be very far away from the fight and the battlefield, deliberately far away from the fight and the battlefield, to think that way and think it is okay.

People attended the event and came back with feedback.

I deliberately avoided that program that day. I don’t even remember the excuse I gave, but thank God I was not there because I know I would have been deeply annoyed.

They were told how to dress.

How to behave.

The same old thing.

Same old thing.

Same old thing.

Same old thing.

Same old thing.

And in another post, I will discuss this issue about dressing more deeply.

Also, whenever you bring some of these topics up, they will always have very few select women that they will use to measure against you, against the majority of women, and say:

“How come these ladies are performing?”

Let me tell you something.

I have worked in institutions where I have seen how some of these ladies are gradually losing touch with themselves in the name of trying to please the system in the units they are working in.

I have witnessed a woman, multiple times actually, fighting with her husband over the phone while at work.

And in my head I’m like:

“What exactly is this?”

Only for her to go and get pregnant by him a second time.

So my problem, my point is:

Are you really sure there is a problem?

Or are you trying to prove a point in front of these people and make it look like your job matters more than your marriage?

I genuinely don’t understand.

And I have seen another person become overly, overly hostile and rough just to prove a point and support this image of:

“Oh, she’s a high performer.”

“She doesn’t play with her work.”

“She’s serious.”

Meanwhile, there are men who are equally as good as her in terms of performance, but they do not relate to people in that hostile way.

They don’t.

They are still able to relate with colleagues in a gentle, courteous manner and still get results.

Do you understand?

So sometimes when organizations point at a few women and say:

“Well look at these ones, they are succeeding,”

I really want us to ask ourselves:

At what cost?

Because some of these women are bending themselves into shapes just to survive these systems.

And then the same system turns around and uses them as the measuring stick for every other woman.

The point is this:

Women go through A LOT.

A lot.

And many of these organizations loudly celebrating International Women’s Day are simply participating in performance.

Bandwagon behaviour.

And every single year, we somehow return to the exact same painful stories.

Nothing changes.

Nothing.

These things I’m saying are not even new.

My mother worked in an organization where the director of her unit repeatedly tried to rape her.

My mother was an HR lead. She was a manager.

And this man harassed her repeatedly.

At one point, when she was pregnant with me, he wrestled with her in her office, broke chairs, and had the audacity to tell her:

“When I wanted to sleep with you, you didn’t allow me, but you have allowed your husband to impregnate you.”

I was that child in the womb.

And this was around 1995 to 1996.

I am now 30 years old.

And these same things are STILL happening.

So if after a 30 year cycle these things are still going on, for me to even grow up and come and experience similar things myself, then what exactly are we celebrating?

I genuinely want to know.

Yes, celebrate women.

Celebrate womanhood.

Celebrate the achievements of women.

Fine.

But deliberate oblivion does not remove the problem.

Pretending not to see it does not make it disappear.

So year after year after year, organizations will celebrate International Women’s Day.

And next year?

It will still be the same thing.

So are we deliberately gaslighting ourselves?

Or are we simply in love with the illusion of this deception?

And maybe that is my real issue with International Women’s Day.

It is not the celebration itself.

Celebrate women.

Celebrate womanhood.

Celebrate our achievements.

Fine.

But stop insulting our intelligence in the process.

Stop expecting women to clap for institutions that are still quietly punishing pregnancy, policing women’s bodies, weaponizing maternity leave, silencing complaints, rewarding hostility, protecting predatory behavior, and then hiding behind purple graphics and empowerment hashtags once every year.

Because eventually, after enough years, the performance starts becoming exhausting to watch.

And what makes it even more painful is that every year, we are somehow expected to participate in this collective amnesia.

As though women are imagining these things.

As though these stories are isolated incidents.

As though every woman has not either experienced these things herself, witnessed them happen to another woman, or learned very early how to adjust herself just to survive these systems.

That is the part that gets me.

The adjustment.

The shrinking.

The overperforming.

The emotional hardening.

The constant proving.

The constant calculating.

The constant awareness that one wrong life event, one pregnancy, one complaint, one refusal, one boundary, one emotional reaction, can suddenly change how your competence is perceived.

And then every year we gather again to celebrate “progress.”

Interesting.

Because if after 30 years my mother experienced these things, and I have now grown up to experience variations of these same things too, then clearly the problem is not disappearing.

It is simply becoming more polished.

More corporate.

More strategic.

More PR friendly.

More carefully hidden behind inclusion campaigns and carefully worded statements.

And honestly, I think that is why I increasingly struggle with the performance of it all.

Because real support for women is not a yearly celebration.

It is culture.

It is systems.

It is policy.

It is fairness.

It is safety.

It is dignity.

It is consistency.

It is what happens when nobody is posting hashtags.

It is what happens when a woman gets pregnant.

When she speaks up.

When she refuses something.

When she reports harassment.

When she wants promotion.

When she wants leadership.

When she becomes “difficult.”

When she stops smiling through nonsense.

That is where the real test is.

Not in matching T-shirts and catered conference events once every March.

So yes, celebrate women.

But if the systems themselves are still producing the same painful stories decade after decade after decade, then maybe we should stop asking whether women are “included.”

And start asking whether we are simply becoming more sophisticated at decorating dysfunction.

Because honestly?

Sometimes I genuinely cannot tell whether we are deliberately gaslighting ourselves, or whether we have simply fallen in love with the illusion of the deception itself.