Overworking, over-giving and over-functioning is leading to burnout.
As a society, we’re obsessed with self-optimisation; we track and tally our most basic functions in a desperate bid to do things—even as primal as sleep—better. And as women, this obsession is compounded by another cultural conditioning - the ‘good girl’ myth. As Jane Fonda explained in our Power Issue, “Good girls—I was taught—were not supposed to be ambitious, or angry, or assertive.” It took Fonda seven decades and three marriages to free herself from what she calls “the good girl cultural conditioning”. Good girl conditioning is what keeps women in a cycle of prioritising the needs of others above their own, and we see it play out in every corner of society, from the office to the home.
