The civilisational framework we inhabit, a neoliberal patriarchy that places the successful individual at the centre, overlooks what is most fundamental to the development of our species: that we are interdependent beings. If gender studies have revealed anything, it is that behind every practice of building progress there is a regiment of people, overwhelmingly women, who throughout the history of our civilisation have held up the world with work that has been silenced and undervalued. The idea of the «self-made man» is a fallacy that urgently needs to be removed from our narratives.