In a recent conversation about age and what it means to progress in 2024, I voiced this fear: “I’m worried you’ll measure my achievements against milestones that don’t exist anymore.”
There was a time when the path forward for many women looked clear. Go to college (if possible), graduate, marry, buy a house, choose a career, have kids—these markers were laid out in what I used to call “the conveyor belt,” and we were all lined up to tackle one life goal after another. People expected that of us.
As women’s rights have progressed, those steps have been relaid, mislaid, delayed, or skipped over entirely, all depending on the choices women have made for themselves, and some we don’t have any control over. For the most part, I love bearing witness to this reconstruction, because I believe women deserve rich, dynamic, unregulated lives. I believe we deserve a choice and a stake in our future.
Still, the expectation—the societal pressure that simultaneously causes us to hesitate and push harder—remains, and we see it in data like this:
Last week, InHerSight asked women whether societal pressures or age-related expectations influence their career journey, and 34 percent said they feel pressured to meet career milestones by a certain age. Another 23 percent said they feel limited by career expectations tied to their age.
Based on comments we received from respondents, many women feel this way because ageism and sexism still exist, our time is not infinite, and women are keenly aware of those facts. It also takes a lot of work to start over, and women work hard already.
But when I see data like this, I also think about the heaviness of being the first. As a millennial (I’m 33), I feel I’ve been lucky to enjoy the freedoms that come with growing up in this era. I’m protected by workplace heavyweights like Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. I can vote, own property, open a bank account, and go on birth control if I want to. I’m part of a huge generation of women who are defining what it means to live on their own before marriage—or maybe without marriage. In that regard, 2024 feels very free, a privilege.
Yet the universe craves balance, and the relative newness of the way I, and many other women my age, exist often feels like a clinical trial instead of a tried-and-true prescription for how to live. It is untested, and with that, comes the responsibility of being the first.
There is joy in that opportunity, but there is also grief, and it’s in the too-poignant feeling of growing up imagining your life one way, realizing you've strayed from your expected path either by choice or circumstance, and feeling like, Oh, the moment has passed. I was supposed to do that in my 20s. I am too late.
In response, I’d like to amend my opening statement to this: “I’m worried you’ll measure your dreams against milestones that shouldn’t exist anymore.”
Times change, and that’s both a benefit and a burden. But it’s mostly a benefit, once you release how you thought things would be—which is the hardest part of it all.
