Work-Life Balance is an Illusion
You’ve heard the phrase a thousand times—plastered across self-help books, corporate wellness programs, and motivational social media posts. Work-life balance is sold as the holy grail of modern working life—the secret to “having it all”.
Yet, after decades of chasing it, women are more burned out than ever, and have forgotten who we are along the way.
Google “work-life balance,” and you’ll get 1.84 billion results promising answers: set boundaries, take breaks, delegate tasks, go on vacation. But if balance were truly attainable, wouldn’t we have achieved it by now?
Work-Life Balance Was Never Real
The modern-day concept of work-life balance emerged in the 80s in the UK as the banner of the Women’s Liberation Movement. Then with the advent of the computer leading to corporate downsizing and increased expectations for increased employee output, the demand for work-life balance became universal. Companies facing workers comp claims for mental stress began to offer employee wellness programs and benefits. Yet, the system never actually changed to support balance—it simply shifted responsibility onto individuals.
Harvard professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter called this out as early as 1977 in Work and Family in the United States. She called BS against the strict separation of work and life, a “myth of separate worlds.” In 2012, she reaffirmed her stance pointing at the realities—from short vacations to school schedules misaligned with work—that make balance nearly impossible.
“Certainly institutional structures don’t make it easy to balance work and the rest of life. This is especially true in the U.S., where vacations are short, sabbaticals are rare, school schedules don’t align with office hours, and working parents cobble together their own costly support systems.”
Fast-forward to today, social media turns work-life balance into a perfectionist ideal, making it more unattainable than ever. The pandemic erased any remaining lines between work and home, forcing millions to juggle Zoom calls, childcare, and domestic responsibilities all at once, fueling the “always on” culture and making burnout worse than ever. And now, the U.S. Surgeon General issued a 2024 health advisory on the toll work stress is taking on parents.
The message is clear:
Work-life balance is not a personal failure,
it’s a systemic issue.
The Real Problem? The Expectations We’re Up Against Make Balance Impossible
Work-life balance was always a band-aid disguised as a solution. A band-aid that says you are the problem, you need to change, you need to “fix” yourself. Take productivity courses. Set boundaries. Optimize your time. Practice self care.
But the real issue? Deeply ingrained gender norms shaping our roles at home and work, dictating expectations of who should lead, who should nurture, and whose labor is valued.
Wait, but what about Lean In?
In 2013, a new perspective emerged: Lean In. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg urged women to stop unconsciously holding themselves back—ask for the raise, sit at the table, exude confidence. It was inspiring. It was everywhere. Until it wasn’t.
A decade later, the headlines tell a different story:
Why the backlash? Because Lean In put the burden on women to change, rather than demanding the system to change. Lean In said go ahead and ask for that raise, and you will receive. Turns out, women DO ask for raises. A 2023 Berkeley Haas study found that women actually negotiate more than men—but get turned down more often. In fact, 54% of women and 44% of men negotiated their job offers, yet women still earned 22% less than men overall. So while we were leaning in, the system did not move an inch.
The “Gender Judo” Trap
If Lean In told women to act more like men, Gender Judo tells us to master the art of appearing strong without being threatening to succeed.
Coined by law professor Joan C. Williams in 2019, Gender Judo highlights the impossible tightrope women walk:
✔ Be assertive—but not too assertive.
✔ Lead—but in a way that feels "feminine."
✔ Be strong—but wrap it in a smile.
Williams quotes one former CEO:
“I am warm Ms. Mother 95% of the time, so that the 5% of the time when I need to be tough, I can be.”
This is the trap: we’re still playing by the system’s rules, just trying to fit ourselves into pre-approved boxes. The balancing act is exhausting and contradictory. And frankly, who has time for this s&*t?!
The Invisible Rules That Govern Our Lives
Society has long sorted us into predefined roles:
Women are supposed to be nurturers and caretakers (what behavioral scientists call “communal behaviors”)
Men are supposed to be providers and assertive leaders (“agentic behaviors”).
What does this look like in practice?
At work:
Women are more likely to be assigned office housework—taking notes, organizing meetings, and managing team morale.
Women in leadership positions face the likability penalty - the more competent she is, the less likable she is perceived to be.
Women face backlash for being too assertive or too ambitious, while men are rewarded for the same behaviors.
Women of color, especially black women, face the sharpest barriers to leadership roles. Studies show for every 100 men promoted to manager, only 54 Black women are promoted (as compared to 81 women of all races).
Mothers face a 5-7% wage penalty while fathers get a wage increase - Mothers earned $11,000 less than childless women while fathers were offered higher salaries than childless men.
At home:
Women are still the default caretakers in most households.
Women perform 2.2 times more unpaid caregiving than men, even when men and women earn about the same.
Ninety-three percent of mothers feel burned out from the impossible logistic of juggling work and home responsibilities
And because these norms are so deeply ingrained, women themselves often reinforce them—sometimes without realizing it.
A 2022 study by Hanek & Garcia found that women are just as likely—if not more likely—to enforce gender norms in the workplace. We’ve all seen it happen:
The female boss who expects other women to be "team players" and do the emotional labor.
The hiring manager who questions a female candidate’s ambition.
The colleague who describes a woman leader as "too aggressive" for the same behaviors that earn men promotions.
We don’t just internalize these expectations—we actively recreate and enforce them, even when they harm us.
Why Work-Life Balance Doesn’t Work
Work-life balance assumes a level playing field. It suggests that all we need to do is “prioritize better” to make it work.
But women—and especially mothers, women of color, and LGBTQ+ women—are already doing more, with less, under stricter expectations.
And the system isn’t just failing them—it was designed this way.
So where do we go from here? If balance is a lie, and the system is rigged, how do we reclaim power in our own lives? That’s the conversation we need to have next.
