IWD Is a Load of Bollocks If We Can’t Get Paid
Because empowerment is cheaper to provide than power, and I’m done being sold confidence instead of capital.
Every year, I have a little rant on International Women’s Day. Every year, I wonder if anyone is actually listening or just politely nodding before scrolling past another pink cupcake graphic.
This year, things are worse again. The world isn't just stagnant; it is measurably sliding backwards and yet still companies that cut their DEI budgets are posting “Happy IWD” with a pink discount code and calling it solidarity. Every one of those messages makes me want to throw my laptop out of the window.
I don’t want a “day.” I want money, recognition, and respect.
Fuck your cupcakes.
I have spent years in the women’s empowerment space. I have to be honest about that. I have told women to believe in themselves. Step into the spotlight. Own their power.
And I meant every word.
But here is what I have come to understand, painfully, in my bones.
We are systematically sold confidence instead of capital because empowerment is cheaper to provide than power, and much easier to sell or market to us. We have built an entire ecosystem designed to keep women in a permanent state of learning instead of earning.
Not quite ready. Take another course. Get another qualification. And by the time you have ticked every box, a man with half your experience and twice your audacity has already taken the job.
$1+ trillion training courses and empowerment panels will NOT close a $1+ trillion funding gap.
The Numbers Nobody Puts on the Poster
While the world celebrates, the data shows we are sliding backward:
The VC Gap: Only 2% of venture capital goes to women founders, even though we deliver better returns. The data is not ambiguous. The money goes to men.
The Broken Rung: For every 100 men promoted to their first management role, only 93 women make it. This first step has been broken for 11 years running.
The 134-Year Wait: The World Economic Forum’s current forecast for gender parity at work. It was 131 two years ago. It is going the wrong direction.
The Stubborn Gap: The UK gender pay gap remains stubbornly unmoved at 13.1%. For women in their 50s it peaks at 18 to 20%.
The Invisible Engine Room: 1 in 3 women in the UK workforce is over 50 (5.2 million women). The system tries to turn the lights off on us at 50, while we are literally the ones keeping the lights on.
The Gen Z Backslide: 31% of Gen Z men believe a wife should always obey her husband - twice the rate of their grandfathers.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/05/gen-z-men-baby-boomers-wives-should-obey-husbands
Change is not slow. Change is glacial. And the glacier is melting.
The Journey: Ripping Off the Labels
The system doesn’t just ignore us; it uses a specific dictionary to keep us small.
A man is Leader, Assertive, and Strong.
A woman doing the exact same thing is Bossy, Difficult, and Emotional.
In actual fact there is a vast dictionary of words, labels, designed to keep us ‘cheap’, stuck and invisible.
These labels are economic weapons. They isolate us because the system knows that isolated women are easier to control.
Loneliness isn’t a side effect of being a successful woman; it’s a feature of a system designed to stop us organising. A strategic wall built to keep us from comparing notes and building power together.
Chronic loneliness is as damaging as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. For women between 45 and 60, it peaks. Right when we are caring for parents, navigating menopause, and being told we are past it.
I know this because I am lonely. Not "no friends" lonely. Surrounded-by-people-but-alone-in-the-fight lonely.
And I know this system. Not from data. From living in it.
Invisible at school: Brown and working class.
Invisible in my thirties: Reclassified from “ambitious” to “part-time risk” the day I had twins.
Invisible in my forties: Working in industries that talked diversity but couldn’t put ‘others’ on the shortlist.
Every label they stuck on me, I ripped off. Racism. Sexism. Ageism.
The holy trinity of “shut up and sit down”. I chose to stand up instead, literally.
Now in my fifties I am unmissable - because I have made myself so. I left corporate life. Built Glittersphere and Unmissable. Co-founded HERA Media. Tried stand-up comedy at The Comedy Store. Dabbled in DJing.
I am not a victim of this system; I am a survivor, and I want to win. If the world won’t give you a seat build your own table.
The 2026 IWD Fuck-It List
Fuck waiting to be ready: The system says you aren’t ready because your readiness is inconvenient.
Fuck working for free: Your expertise has a price. Stop giving it away.
Fuck being palatable: You were not put here to be digestible. You were put here to be nourishing. And nourishing things have bite.
Fuck pink cupcakes: I don’t want cakes. I want cash.
Fuck the 2% - let’s make women wealthy - Women can invest in, hire, and promote other women. If you cannot invest directly, invest by hiring a female-led business as a supplier or a partner. Use her service. Buy her product. Choose the woman consultant, the woman fractional, the woman-led agency.
Fuck the new widening gap - learn AI: The skills gap is the new wage gap. Do not let the tools of the next economy be handed only to men.
Fuck loneliness: Loneliness is our epidemic. The antidote is radical community. Find your tribes. Plural. Glittersphere exists to bring brilliant women together to practise being unmissable.
Fuck being invisible: Step into the spotlight. Maya Angelou said: “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” I want more women behind the mic, the camera, on stages. Stories heard, seen, and paid for.
Now What?
A glitterball does not shine for itself. It is a thousand shiny, bright pieces that come together to throw light out to the whole room.
Write your Fuck-It List. Share it and tag me.
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Do not send me cupcakes.
If you want to support women, stop asking us to “believe in ourselves” and start writing cheques.