As we wrap up Women’s Month 2025 and reflect on its events and conversations, it is evident that some themes tend to recur from year to year. And rightfully so.
Some of the major themes include:
- Celebrating how far matters of gender redress have come from the initial march in 1955
- Acknowledging how much further the journey still needs to go, especially given the recently released corporate Pay Gap Report for the first half of 2025. Gender pay disparities persist
- The industry-specific nuances that reinforce various levels of unconscious bias tendencies
In the coming weeks and months there is a need to re-imagine the journey and work towards “re-languaging” what we desire to see in gender relations. Part of this “re-languaging” will have to be deliberate about being inclusive of every gender invested in seeing a society free from marginalisation and discrimination.
This might be a harder road to traverse than our usual annual rhetoric. But it is necessary if we want to have a different tomorrow for the sake of future generations. In this sense, neurolinguistic programming tools will help us to navigate the road ahead.
That which we say repeatedly, we amplify
Every year, we celebrate Women’s Month with the same or similar rituals, which may not help in changing the status quo. This is because repetition results in confirmation or validation of an idea. Added to this, the brain doesn’t recognise negatives. Rather, it thinks in pictures. When we converse, the language we use presents images for the brain, for example, when we repeatedly say we want to stop smoking, the brain doesn’t recognise the negative ‘stop’, it only recognises ‘smoking’ and holds onto the picture of the act of smoking, not creating an alternative.
Once a year we remember the 1956 women’s march. While it is a beautiful and noteworthy event, it entrenched the ‘fight’ narrative. We need to move past this battleground language if we are going to create healthy workspaces which respect gender and embrace true inclusivity.
The brain automates and re-emphasises that which it is perpetually fed. We have automated a way of showing up in August – the fight is still on – and it is rewarding to have the same rituals every year. So, it takes some doing to get out of this comfort zone and have different conversations, conversations that start with reimagining a different reality.
Re-imagining gender redress
Part of the reason it is not rewarding to shift the gender narrative is due to the brain’s ‘value tagging’ – which is when more value is assigned to some things and not others. If we view a meeting or an action as valuable, the brain will move to align with that. If we don’t rate it as high value, the brain will assign energy elsewhere.
Part of the reason why we, as South Africans, embrace the same story every year is because our brains have value tagged it, compelling us to assign energy to it. This is why it will take much discomfort and personal disruption to create a different reality.
This requires a lot of intentional work on our part. Once we do come up with alternatives, we need to articulate them very clearly and repeat them to ourselves, to each other and our circles of influence; and this will help move the dial.
Therefore, in the coming weeks and months, let us challenge ourselves and each other to tell a different story so that we can start to see a different social fabric.
