When demanding better for women – better pay, better career choices, better parental leave, better safeguards against domestic violence – at marie claire we know we’re preaching to the choir.
So this International Women’s Day, we asked four writers to unpack the complicated realities of being a woman today – from the power of female friendship to the unforgiving terrain of modern dating, and how allies can help us endure.
Bek Day on why being a woman is the best, despite (gestures at everything)
There’s a waterfall not far from where I live that, as my granny would say, “is a real prick of a thing to get to”. Parking is non-existent.
You have to scrabble over river-slick stones made treacherous by centuries of flowing water. I once acquired a fat leech lodged behind my kneecap that made my hiking companion yelp in disgust. Another time I took a wrong turn and ended up in a banana plantation. It doesn’t sound like a fun day out. And yet.
Every time the track finally opens up to the dappled green pool yawning beneath the wild torrent, I get a lump in my throat. I drag every visitor along on the bushwalk to see it for themselves. Gutter credit. “Just you wait,” I tell them. “It’s worth the pain.” It’s a mantra also applicable to the exquisite tension of existing in the world as a woman. Pain is all too often the price of admission, but what makes that pain survivable is what it produces between us. Because while the cost of womanhood is high, the return is communal.
There’s the physical stuff: childbirth and breastfeeding, endometriosis and the long, sweaty tunnel of perimenopause – much of it overlooked by a misogynistic medical fraternity more committed to creating chewable Viagra than investigating treatment options for “women’s issues”. There’s existential pain, too. Burnout. The mental load. Imposter syndrome. Mother’s guilt. Non-mother’s guilt. Then there is the systemic pain. A domestic violence epidemic that makes our own homes the most dangerous terrain of all. The oily dread of watching the erosion of reproductive rights abroad begin to cast long shadows at home. Even our safety nets are fraying; the gender pay gap remains a stubborn ghost in our bank accounts, propelling us towards a future where women over 55 are the fastest growing homeless cohort in this country. Being a woman might be the least appealing job description I’ve come across, but I’d still reapply a thousand times. Because let me tell you about the perks.
Oh, the perks. That deep release after a blotchy-faced cry. Sephora. A debrief with your best friend over a plate of shoestring fries and three limoncello spritzes each. The first time you see Jacob Elordi without his shirt. Work wives. Joni Mitchell lyrics. A tampon passed subtly under a cubicle wall. Those three little dots in the group text after someone types: “Can I say something bitchy for a second?” Watching a friend fall in love. Falling in love with a friend. The hardest years of my life have been softened and saved by women. The steady heartbeat of female friendship, diamond hard and just as precious, has been both anchor and sail in the tides of my life. The worse the world gets, the more I fold myself into the community of women around me. As it turns out, this instinct is evolutionary science in action.
Decades ago, UCLA professor Dr Shelley Taylor realised most stress research was based on men. We’d been sold a story about the lone wolf and “fight or flight”, a frantic, testosterone-drenched binary that suggests our only options under threat are to punch or run. Taylor discovered women’s responses fell into a new category: “tend and befriend”. When the world burns, women are f looded with oxytocin, compelling us to nurture and seek social support. It’s why we gathered as cavewomen to swap resources and warn about poisonous berries while the men were out clubbing megafauna. (It’s also why we aren’t flooded with headlines about a female loneliness epidemic.)
Women are the architects of collective resilience. We alchemise shared trauma into trust so thick we can lean against it. And once you know this, you start to see the proof everywhere. Rib-squeezing wheezy laughter that leaves you wet-cheeked and clutching each other in the coffee queue. The gentle text on the anniversary of a miscarriage that says, “Thinking of you.” An “I’ve got you” hand on your arm under the boardroom table. At a parent’s funeral. After the divorce papers are signed.
It turns out the destination and the journey are one and the same for women. Just you wait. It’s worth the pain.
What Can Men Do? Jonathan Seidler discovers that the true meaning of female allyship
I am very much a grand gestures type of person. Over the years I have tried to interrogate precisely why this is. Neither of my parents were particularly OTT in their expressions of love; my dad once famously bought my mum a breadmaker for their wedding anniversary. Perhaps it is because I grew up in the age of rom-coms, with Heath Ledger dancing on the bleachers in 10 Things I Hate About You and Adam Sandler serenading Drew Barrymore from a plane cockpit in The Wedding Singer.
Whatever it is, I have always believed that the one way to make a woman understand that you care about them is through overblown, often performative means. Why send flowers when you can write epic poems? Why go to a fancy restaurant for Valentine’s Day when you can shut it down and create a custom menu?
For many years, I conflated these notions of sincerity and spectacle. While romantic endeavours were the primary receptacle for this misplaced ideology, so too were my female friendships of which I am blessed to have maintained many. When I discovered that someone close to me had been ill-treated, I was exceptionally vociferous about it. I remember telling an HR team member at a public work function for my advertising agency that they should have a sexist senior creative fired. This sort of righteous anger is what I had been led to believe constituted the crux of allyship. Campaigning at all costs.
Grand gestures work because they are often planned secretly in advance with little outside consultation. Surprise is their greatest element. Because of this, they can be seen as a form of talking. But true allyship, something I have learnt primarily since being married, comes from listening. Making space for real feelings even if you can’t fix them with fireworks. Being detailed rather than action-oriented. This is decidedly less sexy.
There is no award for letting your partner sleep in and dealing with your kids at 5am, or hearing about something happening to her that’s inherently wrong without jumping to fix it. I still advocate loudly for the things that matter to me, but true allyship is an everyday endeavour. It is understanding the myriad ways in which women’s lives are more complex and unfair than men’s and finding small ways to mitigate them.
One of mine was exercising extended paternity leave, which before that point few at my company had even considered; I was there for my infant daughter, rather than talking about fatherhood at the pub on Fridays and showing everyone her photo on my homescreen. Re-watch the films and you’ll soon realise that Adam and Heath also had many moments of subtle allyship. We remember the showstopper moments at the expense of the quiet ones.
Maybe instead this is the year we send the brass band and the bullhorns home. That we perform small gestures that amount to big changes, and talk about those instead. Co-parenting. Equal pay. Positive-example setting in the workplace. It may not make for a memorable movie scene, but it’s more than likely what we’ll be remembered for by the women in our lives.
Cleo Glyde wonders how keeping the spark alive became a woman’s job
We know how a hot couple starts. Up. Against. The. Wall. Then you make it to the wedding because you two just work. As if compatibility were a natural resource, like water, that f lows forever once you tap into it.
Fast-forward five years. Two kids, two jobs, a mortgage. Physical and emotional intimacy slows, then pauses, then quietly lies down and dies, covered by laundry. Romance then exists mostly as a fond “remember when”, like rotary phones. And yet, somehow, the question of “keeping the spark alive” still hovers in the air – unsmiling, persistent and suspiciously aimed at women. Because here’s the thing: intimacy in long-term relationships often gets rebranded as a task.
Not a mutual desire, but a responsibility. Like recycling. Consider the old joke where the husband comes home and finds his wife asleep. Gently, he runs his hand along her neck, down her back, her thighs. Then suddenly stops. “Babe,” she murmurs, “it’s been such a long time since you touched me like that. Why did you stop?” “Honey,” he says. “I found the remote.” Ouch. Nobody wants this.
Of course we want to live as sensual creatures, alive, electric, with all synapses firing. Who doesn’t fantasise about delicious, romantic connection? Men have made it clear that they miss the seductive early phase. See the ultimate Peter Pan, Rob, in High Fidelity (both the novel and film) and his grief over the disappearance of sexy lingerie when a new affair morphs into coupledom and the granny knickers come out. The problem is, seduction fatigue is real. Nothing kills the mood like tiredness. At day’s end, are we in the mood for a striptease, or a bath and candle? I remember when a colleague confessed that she and her partner hadn’t slept together in six months. They still adored each other, but were barely surviving the relay race of parenting toddlers. She laughed guiltily, her expression read, I know I’m stuffing up.
Somewhere along the way, women become cruise directors on intimacy maintenance. Items include: initiate sex without being needy; remain attractive but on-task; schedule romance around full calendars; communicate your needs clearly, but not during the footy. If the spark fades, well, did you try? But sexuality and intimacy are not on demand. No-one wants to be Netflix, customer support and content creator all at once.
Men, often, are just … there. Willing participants, but shocked when the spark goes out, like someone else was meant to change the batteries. Intimacy isn’t a chore, but something two people build, imperfectly, over time. High-octane excitement is a drug, but it comes and goes; delicious cosiness is built to last. Some get that dream ending as an old couple on the park bench, holding hands, laughing at a private joke. Not because one of them worked harder at it, but because they figured out that love isn’t self-sustaining. It’s collaborative. #bringbackdatenight
Heterosexual women no longer want to date men, but they can’t help it. Matilda Dods explains the rise of ‘heterofatalism’
I have tried to be the cool girl, the whatever you-want girl, the dream girl, the good wife, and I still come up lacking I ’ve lost count of how many times I’ve declared, “I’m done with men,” and how many times a table of women have nodded in agreement. I didn’t realise how common this refrain had become until I caught myself using humour to blunt a disenchantment with dating that I couldn’t yet name.
As it turns out, this feeling has a name: heterofatalism. Coined by sexuality scholar Asa Seresin, it describes the performative expressions of regret, embarrassment and hopelessness that straight women share about dating. Seresin emphasises that this performance isn’t insincere but rather reflects that these comments rarely end in the actual abandonment of men. It’s the moment when your friend scrolls on Hinge while declaring she wishes she could just be gay. Heterofatalism is a critique of a dating culture that promises women freedom and equality but underdelivers, leaving many feeling exhausted and disappointed.
The sting of heterofatalism sets in when you believe in true love yet still feel shortchanged by romantic intimacy. This cynicism can feel like a protective cloak pulled tight around our shoulders as we head home after yet another underwhelming first date. I have been dating for 15 years, and I am tired of it. I did not become disillusioned with dating because I failed to believe it would deliver me a happy ending; I became disillusioned because I sincerely thought it would one day.
When that faith began to crack, I learnt to explain away my disappointment: “Dating is a f iery hellscape anyway.” Heterofatalism, then, is the joke that straight women make when we’re too tired to explain ourselves. It’s the half serious declaration that men are trash and dating is broken, while we remain stuck wanting the very thing that keeps disappointing us. What feels hard about dating men now is not a lack of options but a lack of engagement.
Many men, while claiming they seek a “high-value woman” (vomit), appear only vaguely present, allergic to effort and quick to disappear the moment we ask for anything more than enthusiasm. The problem is not women’s expectations, but how gamification of dating has narrowed our definitions of intimacy, blurring expectations around monogamy and trapping us in situationship purgatory.
This has transformed dating into a parade of humiliation rituals and a competition over who can laugh it off most convincingly at brunch the next day. Declaring all men are trash is not a rejection of romance, more a desire to reject arrangements that feel like a bad investment. It’s the throwaway comments of women still hoping for connection, but tired of being the only ones trying to sustain it. “I’m done with men.” Everyone nods along, while I wonder when that guy is going to text me.
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