The chamber smelled faintly of polished wood and old arguments. The committee sat in a half-circle, eyes glassy from too many testimonies, too many hours pretending to listen. Cameras lined the walls. Their red lights blinked like indifferent stars.

Maya adjusted the microphone. It screeched, then settled into silence. She looked at the rows of suited officials, each one shuffling papers, checking phones, or fidgeting as though her presence were an inconvenience, a delay in their evening plans.

For years she’d organised: marches, petitions, mutual aid. For months she’d prepared for this testimony: data, stories, the names of women harmed by laws that erased their choices. And yet, here, facing the very people meant to represent her, her throat felt like stone.

She spoke anyway.

“Honourable members,” Maya began, voice steady though her hands shook. “You ask us to trust a system that was not built for us. You pass laws over our bodies, and when we protest, you call us loud, angry, disruptive.”

A man in the second row smirked, whispering to his colleague. The microphones picked up none of it.

Maya inhaled sharply. The weight of centuries pressed on her shoulders, voices of women silenced in courts, in parliaments, in households. She remembered her grandmother’s words: We speak so the next ones won’t be forced to beg to be heard.

She raised her voice. “Am I quiet? Or do you just never try to listen?”

The question cracked through the room. For the first time that day, heads turned. One official shifted uncomfortably in his chair, adjusting his tie.

Maya leaned forward. “You label us quiet when we’re patient, disruptive when we’re urgent. But the truth is this: you’ve never wanted to listen. You confuse obedience with silence. You confuse authority with wisdom. And you mistake your power for inevitability.”

She let the words linger. The cameras hummed. Somewhere, beyond the polished walls, women across the country would hear her.

“This government claims democracy,” she continued, “yet half its people must fight to prove their voices matter. You draft policies without us, but expect us to live their consequences. You guard tradition as though it were sacred, but what is sacred about suffering? What is sacred about stripping women of autonomy, about calling freedom a privilege instead of a right?”

The smirking man no longer looked amused. Maya pressed on, her voice threading firmness with fire.

“We are not guests at your table. We are the foundation beneath it. And we are tired of being spoken over. If you will not listen in this chamber, then we will make you listen in the streets. We will make you listen at the ballot box. We will make you listen until our daughters never have to ask the question I just asked.”

When she finished, the silence was dense. Some shifted uncomfortably, some avoided her gaze. But the cameras had captured it all.

Maya gathered her papers, stood, and left the room. For the first time all day, she felt taller than the walls that tried to contain her.