The World Was Changed by Women Who Refused
Darlene Meissner is a radical and an intersectional feminist strategist, author, and women’s rights advocate with nearly three decades of experience supporting women activists and leaders in high-stakes justice work. She helps women navigate structural forces and sustain their work without self-erasure or burnout.
Many of the rights women enjoy today did not emerge because society gradually became more enlightened. They exist because women refused. Women refused exclusion. They refused violence. They refused discrimination. They refused the institutions and systems designed to limit their freedom and dictate their place in society.
Every gain women have secured has been won through struggle rather than generosity. Women fought for the right to vote, pursue higher education, own property, open bank accounts, obtain credit in their own names, sign leases, secure mortgages, start businesses, work outside the home, hold public office, leave abusive marriages, and make decisions about their own bodies and reproductive health. Many of these freedoms are now so woven into everyday life that it can be easy to forget they were once denied to women altogether.
Yet none of these rights emerged because those in power voluntarily decided to share power. They were secured because women organized, resisted, advocated, challenged institutions, and refused to accept the limitations imposed upon them.
In many places, white women gained access to these rights before Indigenous women, Black women, racialized women, disabled women, and other marginalized groups. Progress has never been distributed equally, and many communities continue to face barriers that others do not. Yet across these differences, one reality remains consistent: women have repeatedly been required to fight for rights and freedoms that should never have required a fight in the first place.
What is often overlooked is the cost of that fight. When we talk about the history of women's resistance, we tend to focus on the victories. We celebrate legislative changes, social movements, and cultural shifts. We recognize the milestones but rarely discuss the emotional labour required to achieve them. We rarely talk about what it takes to challenge power, endure backlash, support others, and continue showing up in the face of hostility.
For generations, women have been expected not only to absorb the consequences of inequality but also to do the work of confronting it. Patriarchy benefits twice from women's emotional labour: first by expecting women to absorb the impact of inequality, and second by expecting women to do the work of challenging it.
As a social worker and someone who has spent nearly three decades working alongside women in advocacy, leadership, community development, and social change, I have seen this dynamic repeatedly. Women are often the people holding teams together, supporting colleagues through crises, caring for family members, mentoring others, volunteering in their communities, and advocating for change, all while managing their own responsibilities. Many are carrying far more than their job descriptions, titles, or formal roles would suggest.
This is what many conversations about emotional labour fail to recognize. The term is often reduced to household responsibilities, relationship management, or the mental load of anticipating the needs of others. While these forms of labour are real and significant, they tell only part of the story.
Women's emotional labour extends far beyond homes and families. It is present in communities, workplaces, social movements, advocacy efforts, and the ongoing pursuit of a more just society. It is the labour of noticing injustice, responding to it, organizing around it, educating others about it, and carrying the emotional weight that comes with caring deeply about what happens to other people.
The women who fought for the rights many of us now take for granted did not simply carry the burden of living under inequality. They also carried the burden of challenging it. They built movements, educated the public, supported one another, and endured the backlash that inevitably accompanies social change.
That backlash has never been insignificant. Women who challenge power are punished for it. They are criticized, ridiculed, harassed, threatened, stalked, intimidated, and discredited. Their expertise is questioned. Their motives are scrutinized. Their credibility is undermined. Their appearance is dissected. Women are routinely judged against standards that men are not expected to meet while facing forms of hostility and scrutiny that men simply do not experience in the same way.
Many receive hate mail and online abuse. Some lose jobs, opportunities, and professional standing. Some are forced from public life. Some are physically assaulted. Some are killed.
The emotional labour of resistance is not simply the labour of caring. It is the labour of continuing despite the consequences. It is the labour of remaining engaged when disengagement would be easier. It is the labour of witnessing injustice, responding to it, organizing around it, and carrying the emotional weight of that work day after day, year after year.
This burden is especially evident among women who dedicate their lives to social change. Activists, advocates, social workers, educators, journalists, community leaders, and countless others are often expected to carry responsibilities that extend far beyond their formal roles. They are not only responding to the immediate demands of their work. They are also navigating the emotional realities of violence, inequality, discrimination, political instability, environmental crises, and the countless ways people experience harm within unjust systems.
Many women find themselves carrying the needs of their families, their communities, and the causes they care about while also confronting the barriers those same systems create. They are expected to remain informed, engaged, compassionate, productive, and available regardless of the emotional toll.
When exhaustion inevitably follows, women are told the problem is personal. We are told to set better boundaries, practise more self-care, manage our time differently, or become more resilient. The possibility that women are carrying an impossible load is rarely considered.
While these strategies may offer some benefit, they do little to address the deeper issue. Many women are not exhausted because they are doing life incorrectly. They are exhausted because they are carrying responsibilities that were never meant to belong to them alone.
They are managing the consequences of problems created by institutions, systems, and power structures far larger than any individual.
In my work, I have rarely met women who are carrying too little. I have met countless women carrying far too much.
Perhaps the most radical question we can ask is not how women can become better at carrying these burdens, but why women were expected to carry them in the first place.
The women who changed the world were not the women who accepted things as they were. They were the women who refused. They refused exclusion. They refused violence. They refused silence. They refused the idea that power belongs only to those who already have it.
Every right women enjoy today exists because women before us challenged the world they inherited. They organized. They advocated. They educated. They resisted. They carried the emotional, social, and political costs of pushing society forward, often while facing hostility from those determined to keep things exactly as they were, and that work is far from over.
Around the world, women continue to challenge violence, discrimination, exploitation, and inequality. Women continue to lead movements, strengthen communities, support one another, advocate for change, and push against systems that were never designed with our freedom in mind.
If we want to understand emotional labour, we cannot limit the conversation to households and relationships. We must recognize the emotional labour of resistance itself. We must recognize the labour of women who continue to confront injustice, often at significant personal cost, because they believe a better world is possible.
The world we live in today was changed by women who refused. The world we live in tomorrow will be shaped by women who continue to do so.
Read more from Darlene Meissner
Darlene Meissner, Intersectional Feminist Strategist and Coach
Darlene Meissner is an intersectional feminist strategist, author, and longtime women’s rights advocate with nearly three decades of experience in advocacy and feminist analysis. She works with women activists and leaders to understand the structural forces shaping exhaustion, strengthen political clarity, and sustain their work without compliance, collapse, or self-erasure inside patriarchal systems. She is the author of Preventing Activist Burnout and writes under Women Who Refuse, where she explores refusal, clarity, and sustainable resistance.
