Column | Ranjana Kumari: 'Our Work Matters, But So Do Our Lives'

For years, women have been told that the secret to a successful life is “work-life balance”. It sounds reasonable, even progressive. But in practice, it has often meant asking women to manage two full-time jobs—one at the workplace and another at home—while being paid for only one.

Women were expected to build careers, raise children, care for ageing parents, manage households and remain emotionally available to everyone around them. If they became exhausted, they were advised to manage their time better, wake up earlier, exercise more or attend a wellness programme.

The system was rarely questioned. The woman always was.

A younger generation of women is now refusing to accept this arrangement. Their refusal is sometimes called “quiet quitting”, lack of commitment or even entitlement. But this is not simply about doing less work. It is about questioning why professional success has been defined through overwork, constant availability and personal sacrifice.

Young women are not giving up on ambition. They are refusing an idea of ambition created largely by institutions that were never designed around women’s lives.

The Promise That Failed Women

The previous decade offered women a highly marketable form of feminism. The successful woman was presented as confident, fashionable, independent and permanently busy. She could break the glass ceiling if she worked hard enough and learned to “lean in”.

This image of the “Girlboss” appeared empowering. But it carried a troubling message: women could succeed if they learned to behave more like the men who had traditionally occupied positions of power.

The workplace itself did not have to change. Women had to change.

If there was discrimination, women were told to become more confident. If promotion systems were unfair, they were told to negotiate harder. If they struggled with unpaid care responsibilities, they were advised to improve their time management.

In other words, structural inequality was turned into an individual woman’s failure.

Many young women have watched their mothers and senior colleagues live through this contradiction. They saw women succeed professionally while continuing to carry most of the domestic and emotional labour at home. They saw women reach positions of responsibility only to be judged more harshly, paid less, interrupted more frequently and expected to remain grateful for the opportunity.

They have learnt an important lesson: entering unequal institutions is not the same as transforming them. A woman may reach the top of the ladder and still discover that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.

The Right to Log Off

Against this background, leaving work on time has acquired a new meaning.

In many workplaces, late-night emails, weekend calls and 12-hour workdays are treated as signs of commitment. Employees who are permanently available are celebrated as serious and ambitious. But this culture is not gender-neutral.

Even when women work full-time, they continue to perform a disproportionate share of cooking, cleaning, child care, elder care and emotional support. Technology has made the burden heavier. The office now follows women home through the mobile phone. There is no clear moment when the working day ends.

Therefore, when a young woman refuses to answer a non-urgent email at midnight, she is not necessarily being irresponsible. She may simply be protecting a boundary that her employer has no right to cross.

When she takes her annual leave without guilt, declines an unnecessary weekend meeting or refuses to work beyond what she is being paid to do, she is asserting that her time has value.

This is why expressions such as “acting your wage” have found such resonance among younger workers. Behind the humour is a serious question: why should employees offer limitless loyalty to institutions that offer them little security, flexibility or care in return?

One woman logging off at 5 pm may not look like a revolution. But thousands of women refusing to make exhaustion a badge of honour can certainly change the culture of work.

Balance is Not a Woman’s Private Responsibility

The language of work-life balance has conveniently allowed institutions to escape responsibility. It suggests that balance can be achieved through better personal choices. Yet no amount of planning can compensate for unaffordable child care, inadequate parental leave, unsafe public transport, workplace harassment, unequal pay or a family that expects women alone to provide care.

These are not time-management problems. They are failures of policy, infrastructure and social attitudes.

A yoga class cannot compensate for a discriminatory promotion system. A mindfulness application cannot replace maternity protection. A webinar on women’s leadership means little if women are penalised for becoming mothers or reporting sexual harassment.

This is particularly relevant in India, where women’s experiences of work are shaped by class, caste, location and social identity. We must not imagine that all young women have the freedom to resign, become consultants or establish their own enterprises.

Millions of women work on farms, in factories, in homes, on construction sites and in family businesses. Many don’t have contracts, paid leave, social security or protection from arbitrary dismissal. A professional woman may be able to decline a weekend meeting. A domestic worker who refuses additional work may lose her income.

So we should not romanticise quiet quitting as a complete feminist solution. The real question is whether every woman has the economic security and institutional protection to say “no” without being punished.

A feminism concerned only with the choices available to privileged women will leave the majority behind.

Women are not Rejecting Work

Where choices are available, young women are increasingly leaving rigid corporate environments, choosing flexible employment, working independently or building smaller enterprises. This is often described as women withdrawing from the workforce.

But many are not withdrawing from work. They are withdrawing their consent from unacceptable working conditions.

For generations, women were expected to adjust to workplaces designed around men who were assumed to have someone else managing their homes and families. Women entered these institutions and tried to fit in. They changed their clothes, voices, behaviour and even their aspirations. They learnt to hide pregnancy, caregiving responsibilities, fear, anger and exhaustion.

For more than four decades, I have watched women prove again and again that they are capable of extraordinary resilience. But resilience should never become an excuse for institutional injustice. Women should not have to become endlessly stronger simply because workplaces refuse to become fairer.

The responsibility for adjustment must now shift.

Employers must provide transparent pay and promotion systems, flexible working arrangements, paid parental leave, child-care support and credible mechanisms for addressing sexual harassment. Flexibility must be treated as a legitimate way of organising work, not as a personal favour granted to women.

Families must change too. Unless men take equal responsibility for domestic work and caregiving, flexible employment may simply mean that women perform paid and unpaid work in the same place at the same time.

Working from home should not mean being available to the household every minute of the day.

Redefining Ambition

What young women are doing is not a rejection of ambition. It is an attempt to reclaim it.

Why should ambition mean tolerating humiliation, damaging one’s health or surrendering every hour of the day to an employer? Why should professional success be measured by how much suffering a person can absorb before breaking?

For one woman, ambition may mean leading a large institution. For another, it may mean building a small enterprise, working independently, entering public service, writing, teaching or combining paid work with other parts of life. Feminism must defend women’s right to define success for themselves.

At the same time, personal choices cannot substitute for collective reform. We need stronger labour protections, affordable child care, social security, equal pay and public recognition of unpaid care work. Without these changes, autonomy will remain a privilege available mainly to women with economic security.

The real achievement of this generation is that it has begun to ask a question earlier generations were discouraged from asking: what kind of life do I want my work to make possible?

That question unsettles traditional workplaces because it shifts power. It reminds employers that employment does not give them ownership over a woman’s life. It reminds families that women’s time is not an unlimited resource. And it reminds society that exhaustion is not proof of equality.

The era of asking women to balance endlessly on a patriarchal tightrope must end. Women do not need more advice on how to walk carefully. Governments, employers and families must build firmer ground beneath their feet.

Young women are not walking away from success. They are refusing to call exploitation success.

Their message is simple and deeply feminist: our work matters, but so do our lives. Our time belongs to us. And no institution can claim to support women while requiring them to exhaust themselves simply to remain inside it.

(Views expressed are personal)

Ranjana Kumari is Director, Centre For Social Research, Delhi