08/04/2026
TLDR: We’ve been told women are natural followers. I don’t buy it. Women have been leading all along. We organize, we anticipate, we manage, and we carry the invisible load that keeps families and communities running. That’s leadership. It’s time we started calling it by its name.
The rise of the tradwife trend has me thinking.
One of the biggest myths we’ve inherited is that women are natural followers. That leadership belongs to men while women are simply meant to support.
But look around.
Who organizes the birthday parties? Who remembers everyone’s appointments? Who keeps track of school schedules, grocery lists, medications, holidays, and the hundred invisible details that keep a family running? Who notices when someone is struggling before anyone else does? Who brings people together, mediates conflict, and makes sure everyone’s voice is heard?
That’s leadership.
It’s just a kind of leadership we’ve spent generations undervaluing because it doesn’t always come with a title or a corner office.
From the time we’re little girls, many of us naturally organize games, build friendships, solve disagreements, and care for the people around us. As adults, those same skills become emotional labor and the invisible mental load that so many women carry every single day. That doesn’t mean every woman leads the same way, and it doesn’t mean men can’t do these things too (many do, I see you).
But let’s stop pretending women are somehow born to follow because we’re not. We’re capable, intelligent, and adaptable. That has been us leading all along. The only difference is that history rarely called it leadership.
I want to take a moment to recognize that leadership. Let’s take a moment to see it in ourselves and in our daughters. Instead of telling g them how kind they are tell them what a great leader they were in that moment. Let’s start normalizing this type of leadership and undo the myth of the submissive woman.
