OPINIONS & PERSPECTIVES: The Gift Of Not Belonging

September arrives like a quiet reckoning. It is the month after August, the time when the year begins to tilt toward its end, when the light softens and the air carries the first whisper of change. It is a time to reflect on what our lips refuse to say out loud in August each year, as we are bombarded with all things womanish, that try to prune us to a particular shape.

South Africa commemorates Women’s Month in August in honour of the more than 20,000 women who marched to the Union Buildings on 9 August 1956 against the extension of pass laws. Those women did not march to be moulded into acceptable shapes. They marched because they rejected a system that sought to regulate their bodies, movement, labour and futures. In 2026, the national theme, “Empowered Women, Empower Nations,” should call us to confront – not decorate – the structures that still limit women’s autonomy.

Many of us, sit in the August sessions with more questions than answers. This is not a rejection of women empowerment sessions; some are outstanding and will change the trajectory of women’s lives. Others are just patriarchy in polite clothing. It presents itself not as exclusion, but as guidance. It tells women that they may participate, provided they accept the rules that were created without them.

The problem is not that women receive advice, mentorship or support in these sessions; the problem arises when empowerment becomes a corrective project: when women are treated as though they are the problem to be fixed rather than as people entitled to transform the institutions around them.

Women’s Month Must Not Be a Mould

Women’s Month should not be a season in which women are celebrated only to be instructed, corrected and reshaped. Too many sessions arrive, clothed in the language of empowerment while retaining the logic of patriarchy: women are praised, but only if they conform to a predetermined image of a “good” woman.

Very few speakers in the August sessions, speak to women leaders, about the freedom of not belonging. in his book ‘The gift of not belonging’, Dr. Rami Kaminski (MD), doesn’t address woman specifically. His work focuses on identity, belonging, and people who feel they do not naturally fit into group-based social identities. I want to draw from his work and address women leaders on how the gift of not belonging, is the greatest gift we can ever receive.

Not belonging is not a wound. It is a vantage point. Women in leadership are told, repeatedly and subtly, that we must fit. Fit the mould. Fit the culture. Fit the expectations of boards, of communities, of congregations, of departments. We are coached on executive presence, on tone, on how to be assertive without being aggressive, on how to lead without leading too much. The pressure to conform is not accidental, it is structural. It exists because conformity is comfortable for those who built the system. And especially for those who benefit from networks where power resides.

When a woman leader refuses to shrink, to soften her voice, to apologize for her ambition, she disrupts the equilibrium. She makes others uneasy. And that unease is often met with attempts to mute her, to silence her, to remind her – gently or harshly –that she does not quite belong.

But who does this silence serve? It serves those who benefit from the status quo. It serves the systems that were never designed for women, especially women of colour, especially women who speak multiple languages, who carry multiple identities, who refuse to be one thing.

Not belonging is a rare gift because it frees you from the exhausting work of performance. When you accept that you will never fully belong, you stop trying to earn a seat at a table that was never meant for you. Instead, you build your own table. You gather your own people. You create your own culture. This is not isolation. It is liberation. The freedom one acquires just from knowing that you’re ok as is – is a breath of fresh air.

Women who embrace not belonging develop a clarity that those who fit, never acquire. They see the cracks in the system. They notice the unspoken rules. They question the assumptions that others accept without thought. This perspective is invaluable. It is the source of innovation, of disruption, of real change. This in no way promotes unacceptable behaviour; it frees woman who are tired of acting.

We were born acting to be more polite than our brothers; because we are women. We act more than anyone else to try to find a husband. We know too well the questions that follow about when you will get married. We act happy marrying just to show that we did it – and when we discover that your husband is happy and you are just married, we act happy.

We act as if we’re still planning to have kids when having kids is the last thing on our mind, worse when we don’t want kids. We hush that we’re happy to be aunts to children of other people. We act sad when an abusive partner dies even though we are finally we are finally free. We forget that everybody notices how happy we are when we start living our own life that doesn’t fit a mould.

Can we take charge of the power of not belonging now? – and not wait for something drastic to happen before we embrace the gift of not belonging. It might cost you your freedom, your family, your job and fundamental things in life. If it liberates and gives you a purposeful life – please go for it. Post-August is a time to reflect on what wasn’t said in August, a time to be you, unapologetically.

Stop apologising for being you. The real you will crawl under your skin and live precariously under your make up and the made-up bits. Start being you, with respect for others, honestly and humility. Acting is a difficult job; let it go.