The Hidden Cost of Progress

How Economic Growth Reshaped the Gender Equality Conversation

The Great Misdirection

Have we been sold a false bill of goods when it comes to gender equality in the workplace? When women fought to enter the workforce en masse in the latter half of the 20th century, the vision wasn't simply to double household working hours. Yet somewhere along the way, what was once revolutionary became a requirement—the 40-hour workweek per household transformed into 80 hours just to maintain the same standard of living our parents achieved.

This transformation didn't happen by accident. It occurred through a subtle but powerful reframing of what progress looks like.

How We Got Here

In the 1950s and 1960s, a single income was typically sufficient to support a family of four. A home, a car, holidays, and even university savings for children were within reach for many middle-class households on one salary. This arrangement wasn't about economic deprivation for women—many enjoyed a standard of living comparable to what full-time working women experience today. The issue was one of access and choice: women were often expected to fill domestic roles regardless of their personal aspirations or talents.

The feminist movement rightly challenged this inequity, fighting for women's access to education, careers, and economic power. The goal was choice and opportunity—the ability for women to participate fully in economic and public life if they wished to do so.

But something crucial happened as women entered the workforce in unprecedented numbers. Rather than reshaping our economic systems to accommodate this massive social change, we simply grafted women's labour onto existing structures. Wages stagnated relative to productivity. Housing costs soared. The cost of education, healthcare, and childcare increased dramatically.

The Economics of Equality

Economic growth didn't liberate us—it shifted the goalposts. What was once possible on 40 hours of paid work now requires 80, with both partners working full-time just to provide what a single income once could. The question was never "How do we ensure women have equal access to economic power?" but rather "How do we extract more labour from each household?"

Consider these uncomfortable facts:

• Between 1979 and 2018, worker productivity increased by 69.6%, but hourly compensation (adjusted for inflation) grew by just 11.6%
• The average house price relative to average earnings has more than doubled since the 1970s in many developed nations
• Childcare costs have risen at twice the rate of overall inflation in many countries
• Student debt has exploded, with the average graduate carrying far more debt than previous generations

These aren't disconnected phenomena. They represent a system that captured the economic output of women entering the workforce without delivering the liberation and choice promised.

What True Progress Would Have Looked Like

True progress would have meant maintaining that 40-hour household workweek while redistributing it equitably between partners. It would have meant continuing to value domestic labour and caregiving rather than diminishing it. Today, women are often expected to excel in careers while simultaneously managing domestic responsibilities—leading many to outsource these tasks to low-waged cleaners, nannies, and childcare workers. This "solution" has merely shifted the burden to other (often more vulnerable) women rather than addressing the fundamental issue.

It would have meant creating flexibility that benefits everyone—men included—to participate in both paid work and family life without sacrificing one for the other. It would have meant ensuring that increased household productivity translated to improved quality of life rather than merely keeping pace with rising costs.

The Path Forward

We didn't break the glass ceiling—we just built a bigger, more demanding workspace underneath it. But it's not too late to reclaim a more genuine vision of progress.

We must question the narrative that equates endless economic growth with improved human welfare. We need to examine how policies on housing, education, healthcare, and taxation have created systems that require most households to work double the hours they once did just to maintain the same standard of living.

Most importantly, we need to redefine success. Is it really progress if both parents work full-time yet have less security and free time than previous generations? Is it liberation if women gained access to paid work but lost the choice not to participate in it?

The feminist vision was never about forcing everyone into the workplace—it was about creating genuine choice, valuing all forms of contribution, and ensuring that economic systems serve human flourishing rather than the other way around.

A New Conversation

The conversation about gender equality needs to move beyond simple workforce participation metrics and "breaking the glass ceiling" narratives. We need to talk about how economic structures determine who has real choices and who doesn't.

We need to talk about why, despite massive increases in productivity and wealth generation, most families feel they're running faster just to stay in place. We need to ask whether our current economic arrangements serve the human need for meaning, connection, and care—or whether they primarily serve to extract maximum labour from each household.

Most of all, we need to reclaim the radical vision at the heart of feminism: not merely equality within existing systems, but the transformation of those systems to better serve human needs and values.

What do you think? Has the pursuit of economic growth undermined the original vision of gender equality? How might we reclaim a more genuine vision of progress?

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This post explores how our economic systems have shifted the conversation around gender equality from one of genuine choice to one of necessity, and how we might begin to reclaim a more authentic vision of progress.