Women should not have to prove how much they can endure

During my years in humanitarian and development work, I learned that strength rarely reveals itself through grand gestures. More often, it is found in the quiet decisions women make every day: to rebuild after uncertainty, to care for a family while holding on to their own ambitions, or to begin again when life takes an unexpected turn.

These experiences taught me to admire women’s resilience. But they also led me to question a narrative we have perhaps celebrated for too long: why do we continue to measure a woman’s strength by how much she can carry, overcome or endure?

We celebrate women for overcoming obstacles and continuing to give under pressure. But there is also a danger in romanticising endless resilience. When we repeatedly celebrate women for succeeding despite difficult circumstances, we risk accepting those circumstances as inevitable. Resilience should be recognised, but it should never become a substitute for progress.

True progress requires us to ask a different question. Not how much more women can overcome, but what must change so that they are no longer expected to overcome the same barriers at all.

The UAE offers a powerful example of what becomes possible when women’s ambitions are met by national vision, deliberate policy and sustained support. Emirati women represent 70 percent of university graduates, while women account for 56 percent of STEM graduates from government universities. In 2025, women held 142 seats on the boards of UAE-listed public joint-stock companies, compared with 47 in 2021.

These figures reflect extraordinary progress. But behind every number is a life that cannot be fully understood through qualifications, positions or statistics alone. A woman may be a leader, entrepreneur, researcher or professional, while also being a mother, daughter, caregiver, mentor or the person others depend on. Her ambition does not disappear when her responsibilities change. But the conditions she needs to pursue it may.

This distinction matters.

A woman’s journey will not always follow a straight line, and neither will her career. She may pause, return, change direction, assume new responsibilities or discover an entirely different ambition later in life. We should not confuse a change in pace with a loss of potential, or a pause in a career with an absence of ambition.

Yet many of the systems through which we measure professional success still reward continuity above all else. When an uninterrupted career becomes shorthand for commitment or potential, we risk overlooking the experience, judgement and perspective women bring when they return, change course or begin again.

This requires us to ask harder questions, not of women, but of the systems around them.

Can a new mother still see a credible path towards leadership? Is a woman returning to work recognised for the value she brings, rather than defined by the time she spent away? Can an entrepreneur access the finance, networks and markets required to turn an idea into something sustainable? Can a woman move through different stages of her life without each transition requiring her to prove her commitment all over again?

These are not questions that women can answer through determination alone. They are questions for policymakers, institutions and communities.

At NAMA Women Advancement, we approach empowerment from a simple but important premise: women do not need institutions to create their potential; they need environments that recognise it, invest in it and enable it to translate into meaningful opportunity and lasting impact. Our responsibility is therefore not only to understand what women aspire to achieve, but to identify what stands between their capabilities and their progress , and to work with our partners to change it.

As we mark Emirati Women’s Day under the theme “We Emerge Stronger and Better,” this distinction is particularly important. Strength should not mean asking women to carry more simply because they have demonstrated that they can.

The strength of a society should also be measured by its willingness to evolve: by institutions that remove unnecessary barriers, workplaces that recognise different pathways to contribution and leadership, and communities that create space for women’s ambitions to grow as their lives change.

Emirati women have already demonstrated the depth of their contribution. The measure of our next chapter of progress should not be how many barriers women can continue to overcome, but how many of those barriers we are prepared to remove.

And perhaps that is what becoming “stronger and better” should mean today: not expecting women to become endlessly more resilient, but building institutions, workplaces and communities capable of evolving with them.

Because the next chapter of women’s progress should not be defined by how much women can endure. It should be defined by the opportunities they can pursue, the ambitions they can realise, and the impact they can create, at every stage of their lives. When women no longer have to prove their strength by what they can withstand, we will have created the space for that strength to be measured by what they can achieve.