You cannot unf*ck a rigged system with a #cupcake
- Feb 27
- 7 min read
Own something they cannot take
You cannot smash the patriarchy from a position of financial dependence on hope and a joint account.
You can march. You can post. You can wear the t-shirt, show up to the panel, sit through the morning tea with the pink balloons. And none of it — not a moment — will protect you the day you need to flee. The day your job disappears. The day your business structure which your accountant built for "family tax optimisation" purposes turns out to have nothing in your favour.
The scales are not just unbalanced; they’re rigged. And you cannot unf*ck a rigged system with a hashtag and cupcake. You unf*ck it by building something they cannot take from you.
This is not just a flex. That is the fight –the most radical act of resistance available to women in Australia today.
The Cupcake Is Not the Problem. The Cupcake Is the Symptom.
Every year, IWD creates an enormous amount of content and a woefully inadequate amount of structural change.
We celebrate women in business with morning teas and Instagram graphics. We hand out awards and LinkedIn posts about "women who inspire us."
And somewhere in the background, the wealth gap continues to compound.
The average female business owner in Australia earns $48,729 a year. Over a third of women in business pay themselves nothing at all.
But the cupcake problem isn't just performative corporate allyship. It's us. It's the internalised misogyny we've been marinating in so long we've stopped tasting it.
It's the woman who won't apply for the opportunity unless she meets 100% of the criteria - while the man beside her applies confidently at 60% – and gets the interview.
It's the woman who underprices her services, then feels guilty for considering market rates, because being "nice" became financial suicide.
It's the woman who believes, somewhere underneath everything, that she shouldn't be the one handling the numbers - that she needs a man for the serious financial decisions.
It's the woman who deliberately holds her business back from growing because she doesn't want to be seen as too ambitious, too bossy, too much — while judging other women for having the audacity to be unapologetically all those things..
Misogyny is the cultural water we swim in – and it’s keeping us broke.
The tradwife movement is the glossiest, most insidious lie that’s currently circulating our algorithm. These women sit in their aesthetic kitchens in their linen prairie dresses, espousing submission, dependency, and the surrendering of financial autonomy to a husband, while simultaneously running six-figure content businesses with Amazon storefronts, affiliate deals, and highly profitable digital courses.
Nara Smith: estimated net worth $6 million. Hannah Neeleman of Ballerina Farm: reportedly earning over $850,000 a year from TikTok alone — while positioning herself as a financially dependent homemaker.
They are making F*ck You money selling the message that you shouldn't have any of if you want to be a ‘real woman’.
These aren’t traditional values, this is women monetising the patriarchy while preaching the opposite. And it’s aimed squarely at young women who deserve so much better than a beautifully filtered lie about what their lives should look like.
What F*ck You Money Actually Means
F*ck you money is not flashy ego. It's not proving anything to anyone. F*ck You money is freedom of choice – and here’s what that actually gives you:
The ability to leave. Not someday, but now, if you need to. A partner, client, situation you've outgrown, or a room where someone is treating you like you're worth less than you are.
Independence that’s structural, not manifesting. So you’re never trapped by financial dependence on anyone who doesn’t deserve that power over your life.
A business that’s an asset, not a job you created for yourself. Real wealth that’s owned by you, that’s not a co-dependent relationship that demands too much of you, for too little.
The ability to reinvest with intention. So your money fuels growth and impact, rather than simply day-to-day survival.
Time back. Rest, family, and space are not rewards you earn at retirement. They’re built into a business that’s been designed to support you, not rely on you.
Empowered decision-making. You say yes because it's right, not because you're scared of not having enough money.
The long game. Planning years ahead instead of living month-to-month, hustle-to-hustle, hoping nothing breaks.
Now for the number that doesn't get said often enough in polite company – in Australia, one in six women have experienced economic abuse from an intimate partner. Economic abuse, controlling her money, limiting her ability to earn, keeping her financially dependent and therefore trapped, is not a footnote to domestic violence.
Economic abuse is one of the most common expressions of financial dependence. Internationally, research consistently identifies financial dependence, and the very real risk of escalated violence upon leaving, as the two primary reasons women remain in abusive relationships.
Financial independence is not a lifestyle aspiration. For one in six women, it is the difference between safe and unsafe.
Financial independence is the floor of F*ck You money –everything above it, including the clients you fire, the contracts you walk away from, the investments you make, the life you design on your own terms, is built on that foundation.
Build it like your life depends on it, because sometimes it will.
The System Keeping Women Small — And Calling It Help
The IWD theme asks us to Balance the Scales. So let's look at the scales honestly.
Women globally perform $10.8 trillion worth of unpaid labour every year, which is three times the value of the entire global technology industry.
In Australia, we do twice the unpaid care work of men before the paid work day begins. None of it shows up in GDP nor is it accumulated in super. It’s simply extracted, generation after generation, and called maternal instinct.
The scales have never been balanced, but this year they're dressed up nicely for morning tea.
And the advisory industry — the accountants, financial planners, and firms that are supposed to help women build wealth — are doing their part to keep it this way.
I was in a strategy meeting not long ago with a successful firm, which had their values written on the wall, when an exec, (let’s call him Chad) declared that their ideal client should turn over a million dollars.
"So we won't be working with any women business owners then," I said.
The table went quiet.
Only on per cent of women-owned businesses in Australia turn over one million dollars or more which, applied as standard practice, excludes 891,000 women before the conversation even begins. The strategy wasn't deliberately misogynist, it’s something harder to shift: structurally, unconsciously, completely ignorant of the fastest-growing cohort of new business owners in the country.
Women retire with 47% less superannuation than men, despite. They living longer. You do the maths.
Then there's the common advice from tax accountants to their female clients to stay under the $75,000 GST threshold — "save yourself the paperwork" – which is patriarchy dressed up in a spreadsheet, given by someone who has no intention of helping her to grow.
And the trust structure with her name, without her knowledge, on the distribution statement, and no cash into her account? This is income attributed to her on paper, with a tax liability attached, building wealth — just not for her, with nobody in the room asking: but what happens to her if this falls apart?
Beyond our borders, the systematic stripping of women's rights continues — DEI protections dismantled, funding for women's health and workforce programs gutted, gender parity now 123 years away, according to the World Economic Forum.
The AI tools reshaping the economy are being built by a workforce that is 78% male and are projected to automate women's jobs at nearly three times the rate of men's.
Make no mistake, they’re building the future without us, while removing the scaffolding in process.
Own Something They Cannot Take
Here's what balancing the scales actually looks like in practice right now, built in your business, this week.
Women-founded businesses return twice the revenue per dollar invested compared to male-founded businesses.
We are not the risk. The chronic underinvestment in us is the risk.
A business that is genuinely an asset to you, not a busy, exhausting, underpaid job you created for yourself, looks like this: revenue that’s highly leveraged, increasingly disconnected from your time. An owner's salary that is significant and growing. Cash reserves that make you genuinely resilient with cash flow mastery — because the ultimate F*ck You money machine runs on cash, not hope.
The numbers you need to know are: your profit margin, your revenue per hour of your time, your owner's salary, your cash position, and how fast it's growing. If you don't know them, that is the first thing to fix.
Business owners who work with a CFO retain more profit and pocket more cash. Not because we CFOs are magicians, but because having someone whose entire job is to see the financial picture clearly and act on it, rather than simply surviving another week, is where real change happens.
This is not about grinding harder, but building a smarter business that leverages your expertise without consuming your entire existence. A business that grows while you rest and enables your retirement plan NOT being a Centrelink form at 67.
Pricing your work at what it’s actually worth. Paying yourself first. Building an asset, not just an income.
That is what balancing the scales looks like from the inside of a woman-owned business.
This Is the Activism
The march, the panel, the morning tea has it’s place.
Enjoy your cupcake, but know that the most powerful, durable, ungovernable act of feminist resistance right now is making your business genuinely, unapologetically profitable.
A woman who owns something they cannot take, who answers to no one she hasn't chosen, who has built enough financial independence that her choices are actually hers – this is the threat the system has always understood, even when the women inside it didn't.
This is why the financial advice keeps her small. Why the business structures leave her with a tax liability and no cash. Why the financial industry built its ideal client at a revenue threshold that quietly, efficiently, excludes 99 per cent of women.
Financial independence is not the consolation prize for women who couldn't make it to the protest.
It is the protest.
So this International Women's Day, march if you want. Post the graphic. Go to the lunch.
Then come back to your desk, open your books, price the work at what it's worth, pay yourself properly, and make F*ck You money.
Build something they cannot take from you.
That is how we achieve real power.
Business Reset Intensive
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