The most dangerous lie we tell ourselves about women supporting women is that it begins with a feeling. It begins, we tell ourselves, with admiration, with affection, with a warm sense of shared struggle. And because we feel those things, we believe we are already doing the work. We mistake emotion for action, sentiment for structure, and goodwill for impact.
But feelings do not fund businesses. Feelings do not open doors. Feelings do not rewrite hiring policies, recommend women for board seats, or show up when the room is deciding who gets the opportunity and who does not. What actually moves women forward is far less romantic. It is money. It is access. It is mentorship. It is the unglamorous, repetitive, often invisible work of building systems that outlast the moments when solidarity feels good.
This is the uncomfortable truth that separates performative support from real support. Solidarity among women cannot survive on good intentions alone. It has to be funded, mentored, platformed, and repeated long after it stops feeling urgent or novel. The women who understand this are not necessarily the loudest voices in the room. They are often the quiet ones writing the cheque, making the introduction, recommending the candidate, and doing it again and again without waiting for applause.
Consider what it means to fund solidarity. It is easy to praise a woman’s business. It is much harder to become her customer, her investor, or her advocate when procurement decisions are being made. It is easy to say women deserve equal access to capital. It is much harder to push for that access when you sit on the committee that controls the money. Funding is not charity. It is the deliberate redirection of resources toward people who have been systematically denied them.
Mentorship requires a different kind of sacrifice. It means sharing what you know with someone who may one day surpass you. It means being honest about your failures, not just your successes. It means answering the phone when a younger woman calls with questions you have already answered a dozen times. It means giving away the map you drew through difficult terrain, knowing that the person you give it to will chart her own path and may never look back to thank you.
Platforming is perhaps the most misunderstood form of solidarity. It is not about posting a quote or sharing a photo. It is about using your visibility to make someone else visible. It is recommending a woman for a speaking slot when you could have taken it yourself. It is putting her name forward for a job, a grant, an award, a partnership. It is understanding that influence is not diminished when it is shared. It is multiplied.
And then there is the repetition. This is the part that exhausts most people. Solidarity is not a single act of generosity. It is a practice that must be maintained long after the initial motivation fades. It is showing up for women’s advancement when it is no longer trending, when no one is watching, when the work feels thankless and slow. It is building institutions, funds, networks, and programmes that continue to function long after the individual moments of kindness are forgotten.
The women who have done the most for other women are rarely the ones who talk about it the most. They are the founders who quietly invest in other founders. They are the executives who rewrite policies so that other women do not have to fight the battles they fought. They are the mentors who give their time without expectation. They are the ones who understand that sisterhood is not a feeling. It is infrastructure. It is maintenance. It is work.
This is the challenge for every woman reading this. What are you actually building? Are you building a version of solidarity that lives in your intentions, or are you building something that will outlast you? Are you funding? Are you mentoring? Are you platforming? Are you repeating? Or are you simply feeling warmly toward other women and calling it enough?
The next generation of African women is watching. And they are not waiting for our feelings. They are waiting for our action.
Have a wonderful week ahead.
