There is a rather peculiar habit in the creative industries of celebrating women.

We celebrate their beauty. Their stories. Their resilience. Their ability to inspire. We put them on posters, write characters around them, photograph them beautifully and occasionally give them an award.

And yet, somewhere between the celebration and the applause, we forget to ask a fairly important question.

Who actually has the power?

Who controls the budgets? Who makes the decisions? Who determines what someone's work is worth? Who gets to build the company, own the intellectual property and decide what stories make it onto the screen?

This was the more interesting territory explored during Women's Hour: Beyond the Muse, a conversation at AVIJOZI, Africa's creative tech festival, moderated by Zanele Morrison of Paymint SA.

The panel brought together Dorette Nel, writer; Zimkhitha Gova of AWFII; Nothando Pamela Migeri-Maimane, award-nominated film and television hair and makeup department head, designer and creative producer; and Nosipho Maketo-van den Bragt, CEO and co-founder of Chocolate Tribe and founder and Festival Director of AVIJOZI.

It was a conversation that moved between the stories women tell, the spaces they occupy, the money they negotiate and the sometimes uncomfortable process of building a career in the creative industries.

And the distinction between being represented and being empowered became increasingly difficult to ignore.

We've improved the characters. What about the industry?

There has certainly been movement in how women are represented on screen.

The days when female characters were routinely confined to predictable stereotypes have increasingly been challenged. Women are appearing in more genres, occupying more complicated roles and telling stories from perspectives that were previously marginalised.

The strong female character, once something of a novelty, has become a familiar feature of contemporary storytelling.

But there is a problem with simply celebrating this progress.

A woman can be the protagonist of a film and still have very little agency in the story. She can be written as powerful while her femininity is treated as something she must abandon to earn that power. She can be represented as independent while the narrative continues to revolve around the approval of someone else.

And, perhaps more importantly, the women making those stories can still find themselves excluded from the decisions that determine how the industry operates.

Representation is important.

But representation alone doesn't redistribute power.

The invisible work that makes the magic happen

One of the particularly compelling perspectives came from Nothando Pamela Migeri-Maimane, whose work in hair and makeup sits at the intersection of character, performance and visual storytelling.

Hair and makeup departments are often treated as supporting functions. Something that needs to be done before the cameras roll. A little preparation. A little beauty. A little dusting around the edges.

Anyone who has spent time on a production knows how absurd that description is.

Character design, continuity, historical accuracy and special effects makeup can fundamentally shape how an audience experiences a story. The work is technical, creative and deeply collaborative.

It also involves something less easily measured: creating an environment where performers can feel comfortable inhabiting their characters.

Migeri-Maimane spoke about the value of the work her department contributes, including the importance of creating a safe space for actors on set.

That observation deserves considerably more attention.

Creative labour isn't always visible in the final product. Sometimes the most important work happens in departments that audiences never think about, even though the quality of the performance, the credibility of the character and the atmosphere of a production depend on it.

The question then becomes whether the people doing that work are being valued accordingly.

Being good at your job isn't the same as being paid properly

At some point, conversations about women's empowerment inevitably arrive at money.

And thank God they do.

Because being talented, hardworking and indispensable doesn't automatically translate into being paid what you're worth.

The panel explored the realities of negotiating fees, understanding budgets and having the confidence to articulate the value of one's work.

Migeri-Maimane spoke candidly about being regarded as expensive when insisting on appropriate compensation, while making the distinction that charging according to the value of one's work is not the same as being expensive.

That distinction matters.

Especially in creative industries where the enthusiasm of doing something interesting can become an excuse for underpaying the people who make it happen.

There is a familiar script here.

You're young. You're passionate. You want the opportunity. You accept less because you need the experience. You work harder because you want to prove yourself. Eventually, everyone becomes accustomed to the fact that you will deliver excellent work for considerably less than it costs to produce it.

And then someone wonders why the creative industry struggles to build sustainable businesses.

The panel also touched on the importance of sharing information about rates and fees, rather than treating compensation as a secret.

When people know what others are charging, they become better equipped to negotiate. When professionals share their experiences, they help others understand what the market actually looks like.

It's a relatively simple idea.

But transparency can be enormously powerful in industries where information about money is often unevenly distributed.

Sometimes the opportunity is worth more than the cheque. Sometimes it isn't.

There was also a more nuanced discussion about the realities of taking work that doesn't necessarily pay particularly well.

Not every opportunity needs to be judged exclusively by its immediate financial return.

Some projects introduce you to collaborators. Some give you access to new markets. Some allow you to build a portfolio, develop relationships or enter rooms you might otherwise never reach.

The trick is understanding the difference between a strategic investment and an expensive habit of donating your labour.

That requires a certain amount of honesty with yourself.

What am I getting out of this?

Who am I meeting?

What am I learning?

Where could this lead?

And, perhaps most importantly, how many times can I afford to do this before the opportunity becomes exploitation?

The creative economy has a remarkable ability to dress unpaid or underpaid labour in the language of exposure.

Exposure is useful.

But it doesn't pay the electricity bill.

Nobody builds a career alone

The conversation also turned towards mentorship, workplace relationships and the realities of entering an industry where experience cannot simply be downloaded.

This was particularly interesting in the context of younger creatives who have grown up with enormous access to information.

You can watch tutorials, read scripts, study production techniques and learn software without ever leaving your bedroom.

But there are things you cannot learn from Google.

How do you navigate a difficult production meeting?

How do you understand the politics of a workplace?

How do you negotiate without damaging a relationship?

How do you recognise the person who can teach you something, even when they aren't the person sitting in the most important chair?

These things require experience, observation and relationships.

The panel emphasised the importance of being teachable, showing up, understanding the value of other people's contributions and recognising that creative work is fundamentally collaborative.

One particularly memorable idea was the importance of simply being a good human being.

Kindness, emotional intelligence and professionalism are not decorative qualities.

They are currencies.

And in an industry built around collaboration, being technically brilliant while making everyone around you miserable is a rather questionable business strategy.

Beyond the muse means beyond the conversation

What made Women's Hour interesting wasn't simply that women were talking about women.

It was that the conversation moved beyond representation into the practical realities of building careers, negotiating money, developing skills and creating opportunities for others.

Because the creative industries don't need more conversations where women are celebrated for their ability to inspire everyone else.

They need conversations about ownership.

About leadership.

About compensation.

About who gets to make decisions.

About the systems that allow women to build sustainable careers rather than constantly proving they deserve to be in the room.

And perhaps about the responsibility of those who have already found their footing to make the journey less difficult for the people coming behind them.

The muse has been part of the creative imagination for centuries.

But the women working across film, writing, animation, design and creative technology have considerably more ambitious plans than simply inspiring somebody else's masterpiece.

They want to make the work.

They want to own the work.

They want to be paid for the work.

And they want to help determine what the industry looks like when the next generation arrives.

That's a conversation worth having.

And one that shouldn't be confined to an hour.

CoLab Stories explores the people, ideas and infrastructure shaping Africa's creative economy.