If Nothing Changes, Then Nothing Changes

We love to talk about equality. Equal pay (almost). Equal rights (on paper). Equal opportunity (if you squint). But behind closed doors — and inside workplaces — the load tells a very different story.

And yet here we are, in 2025, still calling this centuries-long weight on women’s backs “feminism.” Still packaging it like it’s a political position instead of what it actually is: a lived, daily endurance test. A brutal, soul-splitting reckoning. The cost of being born female in a world that still can’t look us in the eye and admit what it’s doing.

Since the Enlightenment. Since the vote. Since the pill. Since the protests. Since the 1960s and 70s when second-wave feminists screamed into the void for child care, pay equity, and bodily autonomy. Since every single time women have stood up and said “This isn’t fair” — we’ve been told it’s a movement. Like it’s optional. Like it’s abstract. Like it’s up for debate.

It’s not feminism. It’s facts.
It’s the reality of being expected to hold a job, hold a home, hold a relationship together, hold your pelvic floor in, hold your tongue, and then smile politely while being paid less to do more with less sleep, less time, and less freedom.

Meanwhile, the world applauds actors and politicians — mostly men — for “finally acknowledging” things we’ve been bleeding out loud for generations. The Epstein files are out there in plain sight, and yet the system marches on, untouched. Hollywood claps itself on the back for casting women as superheroes while women in real life are still doing the invisible, unpaid, unrecognised labour that keeps everyone else alive.

It’s all rebranded now, of course. Corporate feminism. Girlboss empowerment. Flexibility tokens. Wellness perks. A pink ribbon slapped on the same machinery of burnout, bias, and bullshit. It’s all smoke and mirrors — a marketing campaign posing as progress.

Because nothing has actually changed.
We’re still dying of preventable diseases because medical research ignored our bodies. Still retiring with less super because we took time to care. Still being passed over for promotions because we “might get pregnant.” Still watching male colleagues get applauded for doing the school run once. Still being expected to answer every Slack ping, every school email, every domestic need, every social cue, every goddamn time — without flinching, without rest, without rage.

This isn’t feminist theory.
This is the price of female existence.

And if nothing changes — if structures stay the same, if policy stays performative, if leadership stays male, if unions don’t grow ovaries, if funders and ministers and CEOs keep ticking boxes instead of tearing them up — then nothing changes.

You can’t “empower women” inside a system that depends on their unpaid labour.
You can’t “celebrate women” on a panel if your hiring policy still punishes career breaks.
You can’t “support equality” when your entire workplace runs on the assumption that someone else — usually her — is handling the food, the kids, the mental load, the mess, the margins.

We don’t need more awareness.
We need accounting.
We need standards.
We need enforceable, measurable, radical redesign.

Call it what you like — The Creative Equity Index, Social Repair, Structural Justice.
But don’t keep calling it feminism like it’s a fucking phase.
This isn’t theory. This is theft.

And we’re done with pretending otherwise.