The conversation about women in politics is often framed through a simplistic lens: women should support women at all costs. Yet reality is far more complicated. The same societies that criticise men for gatekeeping power often ignore the uncomfortable truth that women, too, can become participants in systems that exclude, silence or undermine other women. This is not a contradiction to feminism. It is evidence that gender solidarity alone is not enough to dismantle deeply rooted cultures of power, competition, and self-preservation.

For decades, women fought relentlessly for the right to vote, lead, work, and occupy spaces historically denied to them. Those struggles were not merely about placing women in positions of authority. They were fundamentally about justice, equality, and inclusivity. However, somewhere along the way, modern political discourse has sometimes reduced empowerment into symbolism. Representation became treated as victory in itself even when the politics practised by some women mirror the very exclusionary behaviors once criticised in male-dominated systems.

The hypocrisy emerges when society expresses outrage at women publicly opposing one another in politics as though womanhood alone should erase ideological differences, ethical concerns, or ambition. Women are human beings before they are political symbols. They are capable of empathy and collaboration but also rivalry, insecurity, and the pursuit of power. To pretend otherwise is intellectually dishonest. True equality means accepting that women, like men, possess the full spectrum of human behaviour both admirable and flawed.