Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Chelsea Hopkins's avatar

“Women don’t step back from work because they have rich husbands. They have rich husbands because they step back from work.”

I am a woman who stepped back from work for/with a rich *wife*, and we talk all the time about our conscious decision to do that—neither of us is under any illusion that she miraculously, alone, by her own white-male-esque virtue, got a 15% raise or is going to make partner or brought in a dozen new clients the year and a half after I quit my job. We both understand the work I do (literally everything else) is grueling and not particularly enriching but essential and allows her the focus she needs to compete with the men at her firm.

AND YET it’s still exhausting swimming against the current of “real” work = good, homemaking = basic, easy, stupid, especially as we increasingly understand that we’re complicit in the seepage of overwork culture to people who don’t have our privilege, for whom it isn’t a choice. I have an MBA and recognize that it’s just good business for our household for one of us to stay home, but I also feel compelled to tell everyone I have an MBA so they don’t think I’m “just” a spoiled housewife.

I don’t really have a point other than to say it all sucks, and also that the book Bullshit Jobs is what convinced me to quit and also made me a UBI convert.

Expand full comment
kaydee's avatar

This is a big part of why I went freelance. I make less money and have less stability, but I decide when my workday starts and ends. I say "no" to projects I don't have capacity to take on. I step away when I need to go to the dentist or take my cat to the vet on a weekday morning (or to grocery shop, if that's when it makes sense to do it!). If someone emails me at 6pm on a Friday, I respond the following Monday.

I recognize there's a lot of privilege at play that allows me to work this way, and part of the reason I have enough of a network to do it is that I worked for a decade in office jobs that did not respect balance or boundaries, and was generally successful at it. But I honestly felt like the only way to push back against unreasonable expectations was to not be an employee anymore. And I think it's pretty fucked up that it came to that.

Expand full comment
72 more comments...

No posts