Gender, power, and the paradox of female leadership

By TITILOPE TAWAKKALTU ANIFOWOSHE (LEGAL-EAGLE)

I have known lack, and I have known abundance.
I have sat in corridors where futures were debated, and in rooms where decisions capable of making or breaking millions of Nigerian lives were reached. I have joined struggles that shifted political temperatures. I have worked with men and women whose words recalibrated national conversations.

I say this not as bravado, but as context.

Because wisdom, when it comes, is rarely born of comfort. It is forged in proximity to power and in surviving its misuse.

As a young woman, my political consciousness was shaped by texts and leaders who believed that power must be anchored in empathy, restraint, and service. Hillary Clinton’s insistence on women as agents of governance, Barack Obama’s bridge between intellectualism and community, Mandela’s moral authority, Awolowo’s disciplined idealism, Lateef Jakande’s people-first pragmatism, Fashola’s quiet institutional reforms, Dora Akunyili’s courage without theatrics these were not just names to me; they were philosophies.

Yet, I learned early that ideals do not always survive proximity to ambition.

I was mentored, elevated, bruised, and used sometimes simultaneously by older leaders who recognized my brilliance and fervor but saw them less as something to nurture and more as tools to advance personal agendas. I learned immensely working with them. But I also paid a price: my personal growth stalled in environments where loyalty was demanded, boundaries were punished, and brilliance was tolerated only when it remained submissive.

Now in my thirties, with more clarity than bitterness, I observe a troubling pattern one that deserves honesty, not silence.

Too often, the most lopsided, extractive, and emotionally violent relationships I encounter are between female bosses and young, brilliant, hopeful women.

This observation is not an indictment of women in leadership. It is a call for accountability within it.
You cannot credibly champion women’s empowerment while your personal assistants, aides, and team members are overworked, underpaid, emotionally diminished, and perpetually fearful.

You cannot speak at conferences about inclusion while presiding over workplaces where dignity is absent. You cannot project an image of unlimited opulence daily while the women whose labour sustains your relevance can barely afford transport, healthcare, or rest.

At what point did empowerment become a costume rather than a commitment?

How do we measure women’s empowerment when women themselves are among the most egregious violators of labour dignity especially against their own?

If we are serious about dismantling patriarchy, then we must first confront the autocratic tendencies we accuse men of. Power does not become righteous simply because it is female. Abuse does not become progressive because it wears lipstick.

True empowerment begins at home, in our offices, our teams, our leadership styles. You cannot donate brooms to clean the street while your own compound rots in filth. You cannot advocate justice outwardly while practicing cruelty inwardly.

I love seeing women lead. I celebrate women who build, govern, and reform. I ache when I see how hard women work and how little they are rewarded. I grieve the many young women who fall emotionally, professionally, spiritually because they trusted leaders who mistook access for entitlement.

So this is my plea, not my attack:
Let us stop being the toxic friend, the toxic teacher, the toxic supervisor, the toxic manager, the toxic sister, the toxic colleague, the toxic leader.

Why should you be the reason someone cries themselves to sleep?
Why should your ambition require another woman’s diminishment?
How do you call for amplification with one hand and push others down the hill with the other?

Empowerment is not what you say on panels.
It is what the most vulnerable person under your authority experiences daily.

Until we learn that, our rhetoric will remain louder than our integrity.

And history, quiet, patient, unforgiving will remember the difference.

LegalEagle is a Fellow of Lateef Jakande Leadership Academy titilopeanny@gmail.com