March Essay Competition

March 9 — March 22, 2026,

Prompt

The average man, regardless of creed, family background, religion, personal convictions, or social, economic, or marital status, will always feel threatened or intimidated by a successful, strong, independent woman.

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The Ying-Yang Nature of Gender Struggle

By Praise Alamutu

March 13, 2026 · 815 words · 5 min read

Whenever I hear the phrase, “strong, independent, woman”, I am immediately transported to a mental image of the biblical portrayal of the strong man, one that you would need to bind in order to reclaim what is yours. It didn’t help that those that identified with being the strong, independent woman( or SIW for short) were often terrible people. But of course, this is not, I believe, the rationale behind the term. I also do not believe that strength and independence are the man’s domain alone: it is for everyone. But put together declaratively, it becomes political, especially in a landscape that constitutes a counterpart who has generally been both of these things as far as history can remember. To say, “strong, independent man” sounds like an odd juxtaposition because it is somewhat implied in the word, man, and arguably tautological to say those words in that way. To quote a saying from a fictional character, “Any man who must say I am the king is no true king.” So when a woman says that she is strong and independent, she is not just highlighting the fact that she is an outlier, but her declaration is pregnant with the expectation of social gratification. The latter point is sheer hypocrisy, since no man is gratified for taking care of himself and being emotionally grounded. Being independent is not a flex, but the economic reality of the average person.  The “strong independent woman” has also served as a trojan horse for anti-marriage propagandists. They think that since they can take care of themselves, they do not need a man, and using this as justification for the strong, independent woman is saying that a relationship with a man is only a means to a financial end. At this point, feminism has ended, but they will not tell you this. The “strong, independent woman” is not the first rhetoric of its kind. EXHIBIT A – SOFT GIRL ERAThis is the period of zero stress for a woman who is somehow entitled to the best of the best even at the cost of others. She is the type of woman to receive gifts from admirers while aspiring to marry a billionaire CEO husband who the boyfriend that she is dating (and billing heavily) is not. She may call herself a feminist and even a man-hater. EXHIBIT B – THE STRONG, INDEPENDENT WOMANThis is the woman who has learnt to be “self-sufficient”, often not because she doesn’t want to be a burden to anyone, but so that she can politicize it in regards to her relationship with men (and not women.) A subterfuge that takes, but never gives. Her bad behavior is often excused under the guise of independence and “strength”. Being a strong, independent woman has not erased the proclivity of the women of that ilk to emphasize that the man is the sole provider. So traditional men have lost both ways here because feminism has not concerned itself with taking away the expectation of its women to only want wealthy spouses, as far as mainstream feminism goes. Positioning oneself as simultaneously the soft girl and the SIW is tantamount to being like Schrödinger’s cat, and so the "strong, independent woman" has become another one of feminism’s many, many curate’s eggs. At any rate, to fully embody a concept such as the SIW requires a lot more sacrifice to execute in good faith than many realize. To be clear, it’s not that women who say that they are strong and independent are automatically being so in bad faith, but those who feel a need to be validated for it have missed the point. If women get rewarded for what should be the status quo, it becomes a spectacle and not the order of the day. So does the average man feel threatened by the uncommon strong, independent woman? Yes, they do, but this is an incomplete statement. If the average man does not feel threatened, then he will be made to feel wary and hypercritical, even judgmental, for all, but not limited to, the reasons I detailed above.  Furthermore, the societal roles that a man and a woman are expected to fit in are socially enforced irrespective of gender. A woman’s female colleagues, upon seeing her rise to the top, may spread rumours that she slept her way there. This is because she represents everything that they are not. The average woman is affined, just like the man, to feel threatened, maybe less so. The social machinery is what is on trial here, not the man or the woman. Until these expectations are redefined, or upheaved entirely to better cater to the nuances of the world that we live in today, progress will be stifled and perhaps backwards. Unfortunately, people can hardly tell what they are fighting for, so end up in the wrong war where everyone loses. It will, I hope, not always be this way.