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Real Truths About Empowerment We Don’t Often Talk About
- 3 days ago
- 7 min read
Updated: 2 hours ago
Words by: Kia Galvez and Julianne Lee
Art by: Gabriel Barnedo and Kia Galvez
Women are taught to exist in contradictory ways. We are told to be quiet, gentle, and grateful; to make ourselves small in the name of virtue and love, while also being ambitious, exceptional, and constantly productive. We learn early that our worth is conditional—earned through either silence and sacrifice, or skill and success.
These lessons are never really taught to us with cruelty or harshness; more often, they are passed down through care, tradition, and expectation. However, at UP, where we’re all supposed to be redefining what’s possible, these contradictions don’t disappear—they just become more complex. Over time, they begin to shape how we see ourselves, how we take up space, and how we learn to measure our value in a world that asks too much and offers too little grace. From the internalized misogyny we grew up with, to the intrinsically empowered women we grew into, these are the real truths about empowerment we don’t often talk about.
Part I: Julianne
The Origins: Where it All Started
My Guama used to say that a good woman is like still water: calm, reflective, taking the shape of whatever container holds her. She didn’t say it unkindly. She said it in the way she taught me to cook, in the way she showed me how to sit with my hands folded, in the way she smiled when I apologized for things that weren’t my fault. It was love, I think, wrapped in the language of limitation.
Being Asian meant I inherited two versions of this lesson, layered and reinforced. From my Guama, the expectation of modesty, of putting family honor before personal desire, of understanding that a woman’s value lies in her usefulness to others. On the other hand, the weight of tradition, the quiet understanding that certain paths are acceptable and others are not. Both whispered the same thing: shrink yourself and be grateful. Your ambitions are less important than family stability, and your voice is less important than harmony. Your dreams are negotiable when someone else needs you.
I didn't see these messages as restrictions when I was younger. I saw them as love. I saw them as the price of belonging, and I paid it willingly because the alternative of standing out, wanting too much, or demanding space felt like a personal betrayal. So I learned to apologize before I spoke. I learned that being a “good daughter” and a good woman meant making myself digestible, acceptable, and safe.
The thing about internalized misogyny is that it doesn't announce itself. It lives in the spaces between what you’re told and what you believe. It becomes so familiar that you stop seeing it as something imposed and start seeing it as something intrinsic, as though the desire to be smaller, quieter, less threatening is simply who you are.
The Reality: How It’s Playing Out Now
I notice it most in the small, almost invisible moments at UP. The way I frame my thoughts before speaking in class, not because I’m unsure of what I’m saying, but because I’m already anticipating how it will be received—softening the edges so it won’t seem too sharp, too confident, too much. A classmate asks a question and immediately follows it with “Sorry, medyo tanga ‘tong tanong na ito…” even though the question is perfectly valid. We do this without thinking, diminishing ourselves before anything else gets the chance to.
It shows up in how I take up space in group projects. I’ll have an idea and phrase it as a question: “What if try natin ‘to?” turning my suggestion into something tentative, something that can be easily dismissed. Sometimes I’ll volunteer to do extra work, the thankless parts, organizing, coordinating, following up, not because I’m asked to, but because it feels safer to be useful than to be equal.
It lives in the smaller moments, too. I stop talking when someone interrupts me. I stay silent when a prof makes a comment I disagree with. When I do well on an exam, my first instinct is to attribute it to luck rather than effort. I’ve learned to celebrate quietly, to shrink my achievements down to size that won’t make anyone uncomfortable, to apologize for my own success as though it's an inconvenience to the people around me.
Perhaps the most insidious part is how it shows up in my friendships. We bond over our insecurities, our self-doubt, our constant internal criticism. We’re quick to comfort each other when we’re down, but slow to celebrate when we’re thriving. We police ourselves and each other without meaning to, a comment here, a look there, that reinforces the message that ambition in women should be quiet, that confidence is something to be suspicious of, that we should always leave room for someone else to be the star.
Being at UP, surrounded by intelligent women who are supposed to be redefining what’s possible, I expected this would feel different. But internalized misogyny doesn't announce itself loudly. It works in whispers, in the way I second-guess myself, in the space I don't take, in the words I swallow before they leave my mouth.
Breaking Free
But here’s what changed for me: recognizing it. The moment I could name what was happening, not as a weakness or personality, but as a pattern I inherited as a woman in this patriarchal culture. And within me, something shifted. I started seeing the difference, small as it seemed at first, and it opened a door I didn't know was there.
Perhaps once you see the cage, you can't unsee it, and once you can't unsee it, you have a choice. You can keep living as though the bars are invisible, or you can start asking yourself what it would feel like to stop making yourself small, what it would feel like to take up space without apologizing. What it would feel like to love the woman you are, not the woman you’ve been told to become.
Part II: Kia
To All the Women I Could’ve Been
When we are young, we are told by the whole world that we can be anything we want to be. But while it’s a blessing to finally live in a world that allows women to dream to their hearts’ content, what happens when empowerment becomes something we endlessly chase, instead of being something we simply have?
I wanted to be a multitude of women growing up: a research biologist, exploring the unknown depths of the sea; an astrophysicist working at NASA, discovering stars and planets every day; an architect, building spaces for people to live their everyday lives in; and even a K-Pop idol, capturing the hearts of audiences through dance and song. Each dream had so much potential. Such vigor behind them, and yet, none were truly pursued. As it turns out, I was too afraid of the ocean to become a biologist, not smart enough to become an astrophysicist, too uninterested in plumbing to be an architect, and unsurprisingly, too old to be a K-Pop idol. One by one, I watched as my dreams started unwinding themselves, slowly becoming mere afterthoughts and “what ifs” in the singular life I was born to lead.
With them came a growing sense of loss—so many versions of myself left unexplored, so many imagined futures that never came to be. I began to carry that loss as failure, convincing myself that each unrealized dream was proof that I had fallen short. It took me a long time to realize that mourning all the women I could have been was rooted in the belief that I had to be something greater than I already was in order to be worthy.
Love, The Woman I Am Now
While empowerment can be such a great platform to have and message to send, it can be exhausting always trying to prove our worth through achievements, grand dreams, and visible successes. That's when I realized that empowerment isn’t just the loudness of fists pumping in the air, extreme expressions of emotion, and extraordinary achievements; but the quietness of wholly accepting who you are, being proud of the life you have, and giving yourself some compassion to just be.
I started seeing these quiet bouts of self-empowerment: in the way I allow myself to breathe after a difficult day full of classes; in how I cut myself some slack for being a shiftee, already in her sixth year of schooling; and in admitting that I have no clear idea of what I'm going to do after college, but still trusting that I'll come through at the end of the day. These moments may seem small, but they are radical in a world that constantly demands certainty, speed, and success.
I also started recognizing empowerment in the women around campus who are unapologetically content with their quiet, yet fulfilling lives. The friendly custodian by the third floor of my college building, always humming her favorite song. The kiosk owner near the pre-school, whom I catch laughing and smiling with her family as they provide children with food during lunchtime. My professors, who show up every day not to chase recognition, but to teach, to guide, and to make space for others to grow. There is a certain, quiet confidence in all of them—a sense of peace in where they are and who they’ve become. They have neither loud nor necessarily extraordinary lives, but lives that are deeply, fully, intentionally fulfilling on their own.
In learning to love the woman I am now, I am slowly releasing the need to become every woman I once imagined. Empowerment, I’ve realized, does not require constant becoming. Sometimes, it simply asks us to stay, to accept, and to be present. This acceptance, this way of life, and this gentleness toward oneself embody the kind of empowerment that women everywhere deserve to learn and grow into.
Internalized misogyny is the toxic framework that most women in our culture grow up within, and as UP students, we are not exempt from it. We shrink ourselves down in the name of virtue, tradition, and love, staying silent until it becomes second nature, even in the classrooms that are meant to challenge us to speak. It is what the world tells us to be, and over time, we have grown to become it. On the flip side, we have also grown accustomed to the world—and the institution we study in—expecting greatness from us, demanding constant progress and non-stop excellence until we spread ourselves too thin.
The world tells us to be too many things at once—quiet and virtuous, excellent and accomplished—until we are neither and it turns its back on us. At UP, this contradiction becomes even more prominent. Through all the lectures, org meetings, and group works, we are taught to achieve great things without a single complaint. But we, as empowered women and students of this university, must take this narrative and reshape it, choosing to define ourselves not by what we owe the world, but by the compassion, presence, and self-acceptance we owe to ourselves.
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