Is the Millennial Career Crisis Actually a Women's Issue? Hot Take: It Kind of Is

I can't seem to log on to social media without seeing content about the "millennial career crisis". It stands to reason: The job market is in shambles, everything is wildly expensive, and many of us did all the things we were told to do...only for it not to pay off (literally) in today's conditions.

There are a lot of factors at work here, but here's my hot take: The millennial career crisis is, in many ways, a crisis of millennial women. Because in order to fully dissect what we're working through now, we have to go back in time a bit to fully understand how millennial women and our ideas about career were truly formed.

Many millennial women grew up with advice like "work a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life!". We were taught to prioritize helping others, professional fulfillment, and passion in our careers. People rarely told us to seek out high pay — and that, coupled with this notion that it is "distasteful" for people, especially women, to talk about money, sent us a pretty clear message. Careers shouldn't be about financial prosperity or even stability. They should be about this nebulous sense of purpose and personal identity we ought to derive from our work.

Many of us bought it into that message, and now we're working to pull ourselves out from underneath it. Those industries that rely on women and their passion? They're either woefully underfunded (and underpaid) or just straight up dying (see: The magazine industry). While you can love your work (and I love mine!), the reality is this: It's really hard to love your work work when you hate the conditions under which you are doing it. When you're underpaid, undervalued, and constantly feeling like you're disposable.

Speaking of feeling disposable, here's another piece of the equation: We are indispensable at work, but not at home — and since women are unequivocally carrying more of the domestic weight, we are feeling the burnout of holding both paid and unpaid work. Many of us are questioning whether it's even worth it to be giving so much energy to the same workforce that has routinely failed us. Particularly for millennial women, who tend to be at this phase of life when they're juggle both parenthood and elder care, as they are also reaching that point in their careers when they start to plateau...it's a lot to manage. And so, a career crisis ensues.

This is, of course, a gross oversimplification of a large issue that encompasses many other large issues. But I think it's a piece of the conversation we're not having: Because a career crisis isn't just about a moment in time. It's about a whole generation of women and how we've been conditioned...and what happens when we finally realize how many lies we were told.