Mark Zuckerberg is wrong – the problem isn't a shortage of 'male energy'

Iranian stuntwomen pose during a training session in Tehran. EPA

If there’s one thing the world finds challenging, it’s a woman who knows her own power.

Assert yourself, and you’re “too much”. Show care and compassion, and you’re “not enough”. This confusion comes from centuries of undermining female power – a woman’s right to lead, own, decide and shape the world – and reducing feminine power to something soft, decorative and second tier. But female power isn’t unnatural, and feminine power isn’t weak.

Female power is about women’s inherent rights, dignity and agency – access to education, leadership, economic independence and personal autonomy. Feminine power refers to qualities traditionally seen as “feminine” – care, empathy, collaboration and intuition – that exist in both women and men. Society mistakenly equates femininity with women alone, stereotyping and dismissing it as weak, rather than seeing how it complements and enriches power.

People often confuse the two because power has been defined in rigid, male-centric ways. The world needs both. Female power ensures equity, while feminine power reshapes how power is understood and wielded for the greater good.

Women lift weights with during a strength circuit for women over 40, in London. Reuters

Female power resides in women’s bodies. But women’s bodies have been, and sadly continue to be, locations of control and shame – control by society and men, and shame when women control them or when they do things that men’s bodies don’t: periods, pregnancy, childbirth, menopause, breastfeeding, enjoyment of her own body. Every incredible thing that a woman’s body does – her female and her feminine power – are historically taboo subjects, and categorised as problematic, or shameful.

It is only with age, and having two daughters, that the incredible act of being able to create a human being has made me realise the extraordinary power of female bodies.

On Saturday, February 1, two events mark different expressions of female and feminine power.

World Hijab Day, now in its 13th year, was founded by Bangladeshi American Nazma Khan to promote religious freedom and cultural understanding by inviting non-Muslim women to wear a hijab for a day.

I doubt the people of Gaza, Sudan or Yemen – or the countless women who have survived sexual violence – would agree that what the world needs is more aggression

As a Muslim woman who wears hijab, I have mixed feelings. For me, it’s an act of spiritual commitment and a reclaiming of my body from commodification. Someone wearing it for a day won’t experience that same journey. I don’t need women to dress like me to know we are allies. And yet, despite my reservations, I appreciate the power in what World Hijab Day represents: reclaiming autonomy over our bodies, refusing to be dictated to about what we should or shouldn’t wear. Even if you don’t wear hijab, the fight for bodily autonomy matters to all women. A pride in the female and the feminine.

Women are socialised to exist in a constant state of dissatisfaction that aims to suck away our power. We are told our value lies in our beauty and selflessness, to please others. When I talk to girls about how beauty standards are constructed, I tell them the most revolutionary act a woman or girl can do is to look in the mirror and be happy with what she sees. That’s power.

February 1 is also Saint Brigid’s Day, honouring Ireland’s only female patron saint. Brigid was originally a triple goddess of healing, fire and poetry. Later it was the name of a saint, born around 450 AD and now the patron of poets and midwives. After a three-year campaign by the feminist group Herstory, Ireland established the first Monday after February 1 as a public holiday in her name.

The poet Laura Murphy was part of that campaign. She sees the recognition of Brigid as a restoration of female and feminine power: “The feminine has been written out of history and out of our society. Honouring a woman as eminent as Brigid signals a new era for Ireland based on her principles of equality, unity, truth, compassion and love.”

This is Ireland’s own local cultural reclamation of female and feminine power, just like World Hijab Day attempts to do.

It is part of a wider appetite for this shift. But the fact that expressions of female and feminine power continue to face public and social resistance tells us just how significant – and threatening – they are seen to be.

Mark Zuckerberg recently declared that workplaces need more 'masculine energy'. AP

Case in point: Mark Zuckerberg recently declared that workplaces need more “masculine energy”. On a podcast, he argued for celebrating “aggression” in work culture. I doubt the people of Gaza, Sudan or Yemen – or the countless women who have survived sexual violence – would agree that what the world needs is more aggression.

His comments reinforce a deeply flawed belief: that power and success come from aggression, and that female and feminine power are second best or irrelevant. Undoubtedly, hunger and ferocity are important, but such views reinforce the idea that neither female nor feminine power is valuable or leads to success.

It also misdirects people to see society’s bedrock as aggression – or masculinity – rather than what should take a greater share of our conversations about what is the bedrock of human society: creation and care.

This mindset is woven into history. Early human societies are framed around the “hunter-gatherer” archetype, centring the men who hunted while ignoring the women who gave birth, nurtured and ensured survival. Even today, care work – overwhelmingly performed by women – is undervalued. Feminine power, which is seen as connected for bodily reasons to creation and care, is dismissed as secondary to money-making and aggression. But if female and feminine power were removed from society, everything would collapse.

It’s time to rethink power. True power isn’t about destruction, exclusion or forcing women into a constant state of discontent. True power is in creation, in care, in reclaiming women’s autonomy and their stories. Men and women need to work together to value both female and feminine power. We must do that in public, in the home, in the workplace and most of all, in ourselves. Not just for one day, but every day.