Why We Can't Sleep

Why We Can’t Sleep will help women in Generation X feel better about the challenges they face by examining the reasons why they are going through midlife crises due to poor market conditions, caring for children and elderly parents simultaneously, and facing massive amounts of discrimination.

In the age of feminists, women were really excited about the progress they were making. And society was making great progress, so women were justified in being excited about everything that was available to women now.

As a result, girls raised in this time were told they could “have it all.” This meant they no longer had to be a secretary, they could be the boss. They could achieve whatever they wanted professionally and even have a great social circle and family life.

These promises came with immense pressure. Now that girls thought they could do everything, they were made to feel like they had to do everything. They had all of these new freedoms, and if they didn’t achieve their dreams, it came down to their own failures.

But the problem was that they were things out of their control that made it hard to achieve these ambitions. One of these was successive recessions as they reached adulthood which caused job insecurity and surmounting debt. Another thing holding them back was the atmosphere in their workplace didn’t change with the new gender norms.

These challenges were out of their control, but yet they feel like it’s their fault life hasn’t been what they dreamed. This feeling of guilt for not living up to their expectations is what is causing the midlife crises of women today.

Generation X women were taught that they could and should aspire to be the CEO if that was their dream. But because gender discrimination is still rampant in the workplace, many of these women are disappointed to find themselves stuck in low-earning jobs by middle age. The boomer generation may have bought them huge feminist gains, but the workplace statistics are still not in women’s favor. By mid-career, a man is 70% more likely to have a senior position than a woman. By late career, that percentage jumps to a startling 142%. Even when they have the same job as a man, they’re paid less. Though the gender wage gap seems to be closing, it’s actually worse for women who are middle-aged. These women are not only facing gender discrimination but also ageism. They are now competing with Millennials, who are hard to compete with because of their reputation of being more tech-savvy. To top all of this off, women of this generation are expected to be much more engaged in the lives of their children than previous…