In a world built to silence them

I still remember the sound of my footsteps as I fled through the empty streets at 3am, the utter fear within me as I ran, heart pounding and lungs burning.

Moments earlier, a mini-cab driver had kicked me out at the wrong entrance to the tube station, despite my pleading for him to take me to the correct side. I was left alone and vulnerable, with no option but to get cracking on such a long walk through empty streets.

I moved fast with my hands shoved in my pockets, one clenched around my open pocket knife keyring, ears straining, and eyes straight ahead.

A black tinted-windowed SUV passed me. Then further down the street its brake lights flashed red, and the car sat idling as I called out to a lone man on the other side of the street, “Please watch and make sure they don’t come for me?” He told me to fuck off as the reverse lights lit up on the SUV.

It backed up as I took off, ducking behind a van parked on a corner and managing to slip out of their line of sight as the occupants shouted, “Where the fuck is she?”

That night, something inside me broke open.

It was the anger

It wasn’t just the terror of being hunted. It was the anger. The raw, burning rage that one arsehole had put me in harm’s way, and others were so eager to exploit it. And be honest, wouldn’t the rhetoric have been, ‘What did she expect?”

This is a truth so many of us know deep within: we live in a world that feels entitled to our bodies, our talents, and our existence.

My fellow Unshakeables, despite centuries of silencing, diminishing, erasing, and killing, we are still here, and we are rising together.

What happened to me wasn’t new. It was simply another thread in a long, tangled history of female disempowerment, which, throughout time, has been codified into law, woven into religion, and etched into culture.

It looked like:

• Witch hunts, where women were burned not for magic, but for knowledge, independence, or simply being inconvenient.
• Suffragette arrests. Women beaten and jailed for demanding the right to vote.
• Economic exclusion. Denied access to wealth, property, and decision-making, trapped in dependence.
• Silencing our stories. From erased female inventors to the rewriting of ancient matriarchal societies.

But here’s what often gets missed:

Women have always fought back.

We gathered in secret covens and kitchens.
Quietly passed down wisdom through hushed stories.
Marched with locked arms and spoke even when our voices shook.

We are more powerful together and always have been.

I’ve spent many years working in male-dominated industries. From hardware stores to swimming pool shops.

I know what it’s like to have to prove myself again and again, the assumption that my gender means I can’t know how to fix a pool cleaner or recognise a hammer.

Years in female-dominated entertainment fields, seeing a different trap. Suddenly it was appearance that mattered most.

In both spaces, the message was the same. Assumptions rule the playing field.

And it doesn’t stop at work.

There’s an internalised helplessness I’ve witnessed in women that believe they can’t take care of themselves. Women who were never shown how to wield a hammer, patch a wall, or assemble a flat pack. Those who internalised the lie that self-sufficiency isn’t feminine.

This is what patriarchy does.
It keeps us dependent, believing we are powerless and that power itself is unfeminine.

Reclaiming power isn’t about replicating male structures of dominance.

It’s about remembering who we were before we allowed others’ assumptions to shape us.

Assume Your Self-Worth.

Challenge what you’ve been told about what you “can’t” do. Why not you?

Learn to wield tools, literal or metaphorical.

Take a class, watch a tutorial, or ask a friend to show you. Prove to yourself you are capable.

Write. Speak. Sing. Use your words, your unique voice. Tell your story to yourself first.

Speak your truth.

You matter.

You belong.

Every time you need to, remind yourself, I do not have to earn my place here.

Power isn’t always loud.

Feminine power can be still, cyclical, and intuitive.

Notice where you police yourself.

When do you feel you’re too much or not enough? Whose voice is that?

Name it. Then, release it. Again and again.

You don’t need permission to take up space.

Or need to justify your worth.

Every act of your positive assumption is a crack in the foundation of the systems built to silence us.

I’m not here to tell you this is easy.

But I will tell you this:

You are not helpless or alone. And you are not too late to assume the best of and for yourself.

The world has tried for centuries to erase us.

We’re still here.

And we’re not going anywhere.

Be the pebble that creates the ripples. Be a champion for us all.