IS WOMEN EMPOWERMENT A SCAM?

The Oxford dictionary has several definitions for the word ‘empower’. Firstly, it means to ‘give (someone) the authority or power to do something’. I am not overly enamored by this definition because it seems to imply that permission is required in order for power to change hands. The second definition is slightly more appealing — ‘to make (someone) stronger and more confident, especially in controlling their life and claiming their rights’. Either way, the concept that women need to be empowered suggests that someone else has the power and needs to be willing to share it. But between the definition and the reality lies a gap wide enough to swallow the entire movement.

We celebrate International Women’s Day every March, pass gender equality policies, and fill boardrooms with female faces. But behind the glossy campaigns and empowerment hashtags, a harder question lingers — is women’s empowerment actually working, or is it the world’s most elaborate performance? The World Economic Forum estimates it will take 134 years to close the global gender gap at the current pace — across economy, education, health and politics combined. Let that sink in. That is not a statistic about the past. That is a projection about our future. The gender gap will not close in your lifetime. Not in your children’s lifetime. Not in your grandchildren’s lifetime. And yet every March, we post. We celebrate. We hashtag.

Closer to home, in Kenya, women with higher education earn just KSh 82 for every KSh 100 earned by their male counterparts — and for women with less education, that figure drops to KSh 69. We are not talking about women who didn’t show up. We are talking about women who did everything right — studied, worked, climbed — and still arrived at a smaller paycheque. A system that applauds women’s presence at the bottom and quietly ensures their scarcity at the top is not empowerment. Some would call it progress. Others would call it management. The difference depends entirely on where you are standing.

Now, here is the part nobody wants to say out loud — especially not a woman writing about women. But somebody has to. Some women, when finally handed power, become the very thing they once fought against. Not all. Not even most. But enough — enough to make you question whether the problem was ever really about gender, or whether it was always about power itself. We have a name for it. Researchers call it the *Queen Bee Syndrome*. To describe it plainly — some women in positions of power actively hinder the women beneath them. Through manipulation. Through sabotage. Through gaslighting. Not strangers. Not competitors from rival companies. Their own teams. The very women who looked up to them, who saw them as proof that it was possible. Power, it turns out, does not come with a conscience pre-installed. And a corner office does not automatically come with empathy. Psychology research shows that power abuse is most common in individuals with low empathy and high narcissism — and crucially, these traits are not gender-specific. Power corrupts. It always has. The only thing that changes is whose hands are holding it. So, when your female boss micromanages you into anxiety, takes credit for your work, freezes you out of meetings, and smiles at you in the corridor — that is not empowerment. That is recycled oppression in a different outfit. Getting a seat at the table means nothing if you pull the chair from under the woman behind you.

A major workplace study found that every single woman interviewed had either witnessed or personally experienced Queen Bee Syndrome. Every. Single. One. That is not an anomaly. That is a pattern.

But before we convict her entirely — who built the courtroom she’s standing in?

Research suggests Queen Bee behavior is not purely individual — that patriarchal workplace cultures can push women to internalize masculine norms just to survive. Whether that explains the behavior or merely contextualizes it — is for you to decide. Consider what society asks of women who rise. Be authoritative but not aggressive. Confident but not arrogant. Decisive but not cold. Warm but not weak. Is that an impossible standard — or simply the standard everyone in leadership navigates? Global empowerment frameworks have been criticized for placing women inside broken systems without restructuring those systems around them. But does a broken environment justify broken behavior toward the very people behind you?

That is not a rhetorical question. It is the question at the heart of this entire conversation — because somewhere between the promise and the reality, something is clearly not adding up.

So where does that leave us? Is women’s empowerment a scam? That depends entirely on who you ask — and more importantly, whose experience you are willing to sit with long enough to understand.

If you ask the woman who fought for a decade to reach the boardroom and is finally there — no. It is not a scam. It is hard-won, real, and worth every battle.

If you ask the woman who was sabotaged by the very female leader who was supposed to open doors for her — it feels like one.

If you ask the woman still earning KSh 69 for every KSh 100 her male colleague takes home — the jury is very much still out.

Perhaps the question was never really whether women’s empowerment is a scam.

Perhaps the real question is this — who is it working for?

And perhaps more urgently — who is it leaving behind?

I don’t have the answer. But I think you do.

Sit with it.