March Essay Competition

March 9 — March 22, 2026,

Prompt

The average man, regardless of creed, family background, religion, personal convictions, or social, economic, or marital status, will always feel threatened or intimidated by a successful, strong, independent woman.

Competition Home Page

Essay

Score

Not All Men Fear the Flame

By DAVID DEBORAH MELISSA

March 10, 2026 · 531 words · 3 min read

⭐ 8th Place

A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle. Yet the proposition before us insists that when a woman becomes successful, strong, and independent, the average man will inevitably feel threatened by her flame. Such certainty demands strong evidence. Reality offers something far more complicated. Consider my father. Raised in poverty within a patriarchal culture, he met my mother when she was twenty-two, fatherless, and unable to afford university. He was twenty-five, working multiple jobs and barely surviving himself. Every voice around him warned that paying her tuition was suicide. He did it anyway. “You’re building your own replacement,” his brother warned. The assumption was simple: an educated woman would outgrow the man who helped her. Yet when my mother graduated with honors and entered professional life, my father felt not intimidation but pride. Thirty years later, when people ask about him, he still begins with her achievements before mentioning his own. History shows the same pattern from another angle. When Marie Curie became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in 1903, several prominent French scientists attempted to remove her name from the nomination entirely, crediting only her husband Pierre. Even after she later won a second Nobel Prize on her own merit, the French Academy of Sciences refused her membership for years. Her brilliance did not inspire collaboration. It triggered sabotage. Contrast this with Martin D. Ginsburg, husband of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Ruth once said he was the only man she dated who genuinely cared that she had a brain. When her Supreme Court nomination required moving to Washington, he left his prestigious New York law partnership without hesitation. “It’s not sacrifice,” he explained. “It’s family.” Two men. Two accomplished women. Two completely different responses. Here lies the distinction the claim ignores. Some men who appear “threatened” are not insecure at all. They are strategic. Marie Curie’s opponents were not worried about being less intelligent than she was. They were worried about losing authority. A woman with independent achievement cannot easily be dismissed, controlled, or kept subordinate. That is not fragility. It is power protecting itself. Recognizing this difference matters. A man struggling with insecurity because society taught him his worth depends on superiority deserves re-education. A man deliberately resisting female success because it threatens his control deserves to be challenged. Treating both as the same problem allows the calculating to hide behind the insecure. Multiple studies show that in countries such as Iceland and Sweden, men report more supportive attitudes toward female professional success than in rigidly patriarchal societies.  Education and upbringing matter as well: men raised in homes that modeled partnership respond differently from those raised in strict hierarchies. If male intimidation were truly universal, these differences would not exist. The claim’s absolutism erases men like Martin Ginsburg and my father. It erases every man who saw a woman’s strength as partnership rather than competition. It transforms learned behaviour into biological destiny. Male intimidation is real. History proves that clearly. But “common” is not “universal,” and “typical” is not “inevitable.” Human behaviour is shaped by culture, upbringing, education, and choice. To insist that every man will respond identically to female success is intellectually dishonest. Some men dim the flame beside them. Others help it burn brighter. A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle.

Final score

Average from 2 judges

79.0%

Judge 1 — 74.5%

Judge 2 — 83.5%

Average — 79.0%