Gender Equality Is Designed For Some White Women

 It’s Women’s History Month, and most of what we call “gender equality” was never designed for all women. In this episode, Chisom uses the Three Clarities Framework to diagnose who gender equality actually serves, who it erases, and why surface-level representation without structural change is just performance. She breaks down how mainstream feminism centered white women’s access to power without dismantling the systems that oppress everyone else—and why even that access is conditional and illusory. This isn’t about celebration. It’s about clarity. If you’re ready for an honest conversation about what real liberation requires, this episode is for you. 

Transcript

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Who is gender equality actually for? I'm Chisom Udeze, and this is Overnight Wisdom, where I bring clarity to the complexity of leadership, power, and systems. Most of what we call gender equality was built to get white women equal to white men, not to dismantle oppression, just to rearrange who holds it. And today I'm going to show you exactly how. So let's begin. This past Sunday, we celebrated International Women's Day. It's March, which means that the entire month we're also celebrating Women's History Month. We see companies have already began performing allyship. We've seen the panels, the hashtags, and the gifts for women they employ, few of whom hold very little power in their organizations. So here's what I know. Most of what we call gender equality was never designed for all women. It was designed for white women. And today I want to talk about it. I think first I do want to set the scene for what the problem is and what gender equality means in the way that I see it unfold in the world. When we talk about gender equality, what are we actually talking about in how it shows up today? In my view, we're talking about women getting access to the same spaces, salaries, and systems that men have. So in this regard, we're thinking boardrooms, C-suites, equal pay, leadership roles. And on the surface, that sounds right. It sounds fair. But here's the question we don't ask enough. Equal to whom? And equal access to what? Because the reality is this, the gender equality movement, the mainstream one, the corporate one, the one that gets funding and hashtags and panel discussions, it was built to get certain white women equal to white men. Not to dismantle the systems that exploit everyone else, not to redistribute power, just to rearrange it, just to rearrange who gets to hold it. And here's what I mean. When we celebrate the first woman CEO, we rarely ask, what is she the CEO for? What does the company actually extract and from whom? Who does it exploit? Does her presence actually change the structure or just who sits at the top? we push for equal pay, we celebrate when white women close the gap with white men, ignore that black women are still making less to the white man's dollar. Latina women are making even less, indigenous women even less. oh Gender equality did not fix that. It just gave some women access to the same extractive systems. Let's think about it. More women in corporate leadership hasn't stopped wage theft. More women on boards has not upended unpaid labor. More women CEOs hasn't dismantled the systems that underpay care workers, domestic workers, service workers, Most of whom are women of color. Gender equality as it has been sold to us was never about liberation. It was always about assimilation. Assimilation to systems designed to exploit. And the people who benefit? White women. At least certain kinds of white women. So I want to break this down using my three clarities framework because when I say this, it is not just a political critique. I also find it to be a clarity problem. Now, if you're new here, my three clarity's framework is identity clarity, context clarity, and power clarity. And I use this to decipher, well, the world. So if we use identity clarity, we have to ask questions like, whose equality are we centering? When we say women, who are we actually talking about? The mainstream gender equality movement centers white women, middle-class women, non-disabled women, cisgendered women, educated women, women who can lean in, and honestly, also women like me. But that's a conversation for another day. You know who it erases? Working class women. Women of color, Black women, racialized women, Indigenous women, fat women, disabled women. Muslim women, trans women, older women, sex workers, undocumented women, women who can't lean in because they are too busy holding everyone else up. Identity clarity asks whose liberation are we actually fighting for? If your version of gender equality doesn't include the most marginalized women, it is not liberation. It's just a new flavor of gate-skeeping. So now we move to context clarity. And we have to ask what systems shape equality? Context clarity asks, what is the terrain we are actually operating in? And here's what the terrain tells us. The systems that create gender inequality are the same systems that creates racial inequality, class inequality, and all other forms of oppression. Patriarchy did not invent itself. It was built alongside colonialism, capitalism, and white supremacy. The systems don't operate separately. They are interconnected. They are interlocking. So when we talk about gender equality without talking about race or class or disability or sexual orientation, we're not addressing the actual system. just rearranging furniture. So take for example, a white woman CEO can experience sexism and still benefit from white supremacy at the same time. She might face a glass ceiling and yet have a salary built on underpaid label of women of color and other white women who don't fit the mold. clarity shows us if our version of equality doesn't challenge the systems that exploit, extract and exclude, it's not equality. It's basically just a way of rearranging who gets to be oppressed. So now we move to power clarity. Who benefits? Who's left behind? And we have to ask questions like, who holds power? Who profits and who's still excluded? Here are some of the stakeholders who benefit from surface level gender equality. First, I'm thinking about corporations. More women in leadership equals better PR. But the extraction does not change. The extraction remains the same. Then I'm thinking about men because This surface level equality does not actually threaten their dominance. And of course, white women who have access to power without accountability for how they use it. Now you want to know who gets left behind? working class women, women of color, fat women, disabled women, Muslim women, trans women, sex workers, immigrant women. redistributing power, it's just window dressing. If representation doesn't come with structural change, it's performance. If access doesn't come with accountability, it's BS, quite frankly. And at the same time, we also need to get honest about something. Even for white women, the equality they were promised is an illusion. Gender equality, the way it is practiced today, was created to give some white women the appearance of equality to white men as long as they stay young, as long as they stay appealing, as long as they remain useful to the patriarchy. But the moment a white woman ages out of desirability, the moment she no longer fits the narrow frame of cute and obedient, the moment she challenges power instead of performing it, she too. becomes a problem. The patriarchy does not liberate white women. It loans them proximity to power and it revokes it the second they stop serving its interests. Think about it. women become invisible. Ambitious women get called aggressive. Women who speak up get labeled as difficult. women who refuse to perform femininity the right way get punished. White women were never given equality. They were just giving conditional access. And that access depends on them staying compliant, staying quiet, staying young enough and pretty enough and non-threatening enough to be tolerated. So when I say gender equality is for white women, I am not saying that white women are free. On the contrary, they are not. I am saying that they are sold a version of equality that requires them to uphold the very systems oppressing everyone else, including eventually themselves. And that is not liberation. That's a trap with better lighting. So what does real liberation look like? So with gender equality as it's been sold, it's for white women. What is the alternative? I think the alternative is intersectional liberation. not just gender, not just race, not just class, all of it together because the systems that oppress don't work in isolation. Now, what would that look like? I think it would look like liberation that centers the most marginalized, not the most palatable. Liberation that dismantles oppressive systems, not just give some women access to them. Liberation that redistributes power, not just rearranges it. Liberation that demands accountability, not just representation. So for some concrete examples, instead of celebrating the first CEO in a company, we have to ask, what is her company doing? Who does it exploit? And what is she actually changing? we all women, including the ones that are doing care work, domestic work, service work. They paid commensurately to the time and the efforts they are putting in. instead of performative diversity panels, start demanding decision-making power, budget control, the ability to fire people who uphold - harm. Because here's what I know, equality without justice is just assimilation. Yeah. Representation without redistribution of power is performance. And access without accountability is just creating new flavors and versions of gatekeepers. And it doesn't serve anyone, not even white women. So this Women's History Month, I'd love to encourage you all to start asking different questions. from an identity clarity perspective, ask, whose equality are we actually centering and who is being erased? From a context clarity perspective, ask what systems shape this? What structures must we collectively dismantle? Power Clarity asks, who benefits, who is left behind, and what does real redistribution actually look like within the context, the society, and the workplace in which I exist in? Gender equality is not enough. We need transformation. We need collective liberation. We need liberation that includes fat women and Muslim women and disabled women and sex workers and working class women and, you know, trans women, all of us, not equality on men's terms, liberation on ours. Can we imagine that? I think that we can. But more importantly, I think that we must, if our daughters and our sisters and our nieces are to have a future. We must. Thanks for listening to Overnight Wisdom. If this conversation challenged you, good. Share it with someone who needs to hear it. If you have a different opinion, I welcome your questions. your feedback and your comments. If there's also a systemic topic you'd like to see me unpack using my Three Clarities framework, give me a shout. I'd love to hear from you. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Until next time, lead from where you actually are. And don't be afraid to lean into the difficult conversation. I'm Chisom Udeze I'm glad you're here.