I Built the Women's Media Platform South Africa Was Missing
By Elize Fisher | Founder & Editor-in-Chief, WorkingMama®
What was I looking for?
Not fame. Not a following. Not a seat at any particular table.
I was looking to be seen. Not in the way the word gets used on social media, where visibility is measured in numbers and reach. In the way that matters before any of that. The kind that says: you are here, your work is real, and it counts.
I did not find it. Not for a very long time.
And so eventually I built it myself. South Africa had no shortage of media. What it was missing was a women's media platform South Africa's professional women could actually see themselves in; not as consumers, but as whole people.
What invisibility taught me
I was a quiet child. Reserved. An observer.
I learned early that speaking came with a cost. The moment I opened my mouth, something was wrong with it. My pronunciation was off. My accent was different. I said something incorrectly or phrased something in a way that made the people around me laugh or correct me or go quiet in that particular way that is worse than laughter.
So I stopped.
I watched instead. I listened. I took everything in and said very little out loud. And the world, as it tends to do, accepted that arrangement completely. If you are quiet, people stop expecting to hear from you. If you stop expecting to be heard, you stop being surprised when you are not.
That is how invisibility works. Not as a single event. As a slow agreement between you and the world around you that your presence does not need to be acknowledged.
I grew up as a young brown girl in South Africa carrying that agreement. It followed me into classrooms, into boardrooms, into rooms full of women who were supposedly there to support each other.
I was there. I was just not visible.
The Women's Media Platform South Africa Was Missing
As I got older and more aware, I found spaces that spoke about empowering women. Platforms built around the idea of recognition and celebration and visibility. And for a moment I thought: this is it. This is the thing I was looking for.
But I kept noticing the same pattern.
The women being celebrated were often already successful. Already connected. Already known.
There was nothing wrong with celebrating them. Their work deserved recognition too.
What troubled me was how often recognition seemed to begin there.
What about the woman still building? Still trying to figure out cash flow and clients and childcare and confidence, all at the same time? The one without the impressive turnover, the established network or the right connections?
Her work mattered too.
She simply hadn't arrived yet.
And growing up, I had absorbed a specific message about recognition — that wanting it was vain. That expecting credit for your work was boastful. That the humble thing, the right thing, was to do the work quietly and not ask for anything in return.
I had absorbed that message so completely that for years I believed it.
I did not want to be celebrated. I just wanted to do the work and have the work be seen. Not for ego. Not for status. Simply to exist in a professional space without being invisible.
That felt like too much to ask. And most of the platforms I encountered confirmed that feeling.
What I was actually looking for
I was looking for a space where the woman still on her way was treated with the same seriousness as the woman who had already arrived.
Where being a working mother was not a footnote to her professional identity but the full context of it.
Where recognition was not something a woman had to earn only after she had already become successful.
Where a brown girl who had spent most of her life being quiet because speaking felt dangerous could find her voice without apologising for the sound of it.
I was not looking for a magazine.
I was looking for proof that a space like that was possible.
When I could not find it, I understood that I was going to have to build it.
What WorkingMama actually is
People sometimes describe WorkingMama as a media platform. A publication. A content business. All of those things are accurate.
But they are not what it is to me.
To me, WorkingMama is the answer to a question I spent most of my life not even knowing I was asking.
It is built for the woman who has been in the room without being in the conversation. The one whose work has been credited to someone else. The one who was told that wanting recognition was a character flaw rather than a basic human need. The one who learned to be quiet and is still unlearning it.
I know her because I was her.
I still am her, in many ways. The reserved observer who built something visible not because she wanted to be in the limelight but because she understood what it costs a woman to spend her life outside of it.
The platform I couldn't find
The question at the beginning of this article was: what was I looking for?
The honest answer is that I was looking for somewhere that took women seriously. Not as consumers. Not as an audience to be marketed at. Not as a demographic to be packaged and sold to advertisers. As whole people. Complex, capable, ambitious, exhausted, visionary, practical, still-figuring-it-out people.
I was looking for a platform that understood that visibility is not vanity.
That being seen is not the same as being boastful.
That visibility should not begin only once a woman has arrived.
That the woman still on her way deserves to be acknowledged, celebrated and taken seriously right now. Not when she has arrived. Not when she has the turnover or the connections or the profile that makes recognition feel safe to give.
Right now. In the middle of the building.
I could not find that platform.
So I built it.
And I built it for every woman who has ever been in a room and felt like she was not quite there.
Because I know exactly what that feels like.
And it is not something anyone should have to feel alone.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is WorkingMama®? WorkingMama® is a South African premium media platform for professional women, working mothers and female founders. Founded by Elize Fisher in 2022, it combines a print and digital magazine, newsletter, events and editorial content built around visibility, leadership and the real lives of working women.
Who is WorkingMama® built for? WorkingMama® is built for the woman still building; the professional woman, the female founder, the working mother navigating a career and a family simultaneously. It exists to celebrate and take seriously women at every stage, not only those who have already arrived.
Why did Elize Fisher start WorkingMama®? Elize Fisher founded WorkingMama® because she could not find a South African media platform that treated professional women as whole, complex people rather than a consumer demographic. She built the platform she had been looking for.
Is WorkingMama® only a magazine? No. WorkingMama® is a multi-channel platform that includes a quarterly print and digital magazine distributed nationally, a weekly newsletter, signature events, editorial partnerships and an online publication at workingmamaza.com.
Elize Fisher is the Founder, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of WorkingMama®, South Africa's premium media platform for professional women and female founders.
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