Why Gen Z daughters don't want to follow in their professional mother's footsteps

They are redefining what the glass ceiling even looks like....

Welcome back to Dr Eliza Filby's newsletter. Stick around and you’ll find all my latest insights, essays and research into generational evolution how we can understand the world of our parents, ourselves and the future world of our kids.

In this week’s edition:

1. How Gen Z’ers are rejecting the feminist progress of their mothers
2. How AI is helping people pleasers - and bad writers
3. Have young people given up on faith?
4. Gen Z has been raised on ‘disturbing images’ in the news and online

Why Gen Z daughters don't want to follow in their professional mother's footsteps

Teenage rebellion has always manifested itself in different ways; from punks and goths to drink and drugs, the young have always found ways to express a defiant identity. But 20 years into the 21st century this rite of passage is taking on a new form and, as in so many areas, Gen Z are shaking things up. The biggest rebellion of all these-days is telling your parents that you don’t want to work as hard as them.?

In my focus group discussions with Gen Z women in their teens and twenties, a prevalent theme is emerging. These young women, like many of their peers, want greater work-life balance. But, crucially, they don’t just want it when they’re young. They plan to prioritise autonomy and flexibility throughout their career. Why?? Because they’ve looked at the way their professional mothers have dedicated themselves to their careers, and their response is a resounding: “count me out.”

I also spend a lot of time talking to these mothers, in their forties and fifties, most of whom are in professional careers and have spent decades achieving seniority, and I sense genuine disappointment that so many of their daughters are rejecting the feminist example that they’ve worked so hard to set. Women brought up on the idea that they could have it all if they’re prepared to ‘lean in’ and fight for it are failing to recruit the next generation to this cause.

Like so much in the field of generational analysis, we can’t paint in broad strokes. My observations here are specific to the kind of middle class household where children grew up watching both parents work hard to progress in a professional career. They’ve seen their parents commit to the ‘always on’ mindset of digital connectivity, and they’ve very often seen their mums run twice as fast just to keep up with the men.

As one Gen Z daughter and PR account manager put it: ’My mum was a lawyer; she worked so hard but we never saw her. When we were on holiday, she was so exhausted that she just wasn’t much fun’. She is determined to have a much longer career break than her mother did when she had children.

It’s not that Gen Z?lacks ambition, far from it, they just believe that they can achieve success on their own terms.

While Baby Boomer women often found themselves the only woman in the room at work - let alone the boardroom - Gen X were the pioneering feminist generation, where an increasing number of female graduates entered the male dominated professions, collectively smashing the glass ceiling while being determined to raise up women around them. They broke down boundaries. But they often had to do it by contorting themselves, their fertility and their family obligations. All to fit in a rigid male breadwinner work-model.

That so many Gen Z women want to envisage another way is unnerving for women in their forties and fifties now, who, unlike their mothers, felt they were setting a clear feminist example for their daughters. One woman confided to me “Not only does my daughter not want to follow in my footsteps, she doesn’t even respect the example I’ve set and to be honest, I find that difficult to swallow but I also know she’s got a point.” Generational influence on work is flowing upwards.

What is going on here? Is it that this next generation are naive? Or maybe over-parented, more individualistic and therefore unwilling to fit into a rigid career structure? They want fluid careers, perhaps multiple careers, and are not wedded to a ladder in the same conformist way their mothers had to be. But they are also aware that life is long and agility will be key in the age of Gen A.I.? I spoke to one 21 year old girl who listed five different careers that she wanted throughout her working life, and precisely what decades in life she would have them.?

This though does feel like a particular gender moment. The pandemic triggered a new era of worker autonomy and all the signs are that the next generation of professional millennial parents are thinking very differently. Not least because they do not have the same rewards or sense of stability that their parents enjoyed, and they know they will be working for longer.

Every generation attempts to rewrite the rules. If Gen Z women do manage to craft a better, more flexible, career strategy they will, no doubt, be building on (rather than rejecting) the foundations laid by their working mothers.

The Reading Room

1. It seems it’s not just the phone that younger people struggle to use with confidence; a new survey suggests email might be beyond the reach of Gen Z, too. Major employers have reported frustration that younger team members are often hopeless at constructing a work email. But help is at hand with new AI-powered writing tools. Firms are trialling the use of Copilot software, which is a more sophisticated version of ‘suggested replies’ we see in Gmail. Personally, I use Chat GPT to write the emails I hate writing, such as when I have to say no, or let someone down, or put something in hyper-official language. This is definitely the short-term future of Gen A.I. - not a co-pilot, more a dogsbody.
2. Are young people losing their religion? Did they ever even have it? According to new?polling , there has been a global and rapid rise in the number of people identifying as non-religious, especially among young adults. In the US, for example, 43% of 18-28-year-old Americans now identify as “nonbelievers” - leaving religious institutions racking their brains as to how can they appeal to younger generations. One popular approach in recent years has been hosting more “modern”?events in churches and cathedrals. In the UK, for example, Canterbury Cathedral recently?announced ?its first ever ‘90s silent disco, featuring music from pop groups including the Backstreet Boys, The Spice Girls?and?Eminem. Last month Durham Cathedral?welcomed ?the Hoosiers, while St James’s Church in Piccadilly regularly?hosts ?drag nights. One cathedral even?installed ?a 55-foot helter-skelter. This isn’t just happening in the UK. Orthodox churches in Turkey have hosted?techno raves , and St Thomas Church in Berlin recently transformed into a?“techno temple” . Ironically, those that do attend regular worship are the most likely to be outraged by the installation of a skate ramp in the nave. But this is nothing new; they’ve been doing this stuff since the 1960s to appeal to the young. If I was the church I would focus less on raves, and more on the two things the young lack most: community and connection. I was asked about this trend at a speech recently, by a pastor in the audience, and as a historian of religion and values I couldn’t help but give him a depressing answer: a combination of hyper individualism, a break in female transference of religion from the Boomers onwards, sexual abuse scandals and competition from secular social causes does, I think, represent a new and important break in the ideological positioning of faith amongst the populace (and not just the young). Perhaps most interestingly, the secular trend is also evident in the Middle East .
3. Like the rest of us, Gen Z just witnessed the appalling events in Israel hit social media almost in real time. Unlike the rest of us, however, they’ve been raised on unfiltered news images and disturbing content. This generation, aged 11 to 26, has already lived through numerous historic events, ranging from a once-per-century pandemic, to the Jan. 6 insurrection in the US. Then there’s the first major European ground war since World War II in Ukraine, which features raw images of the reality of war alongside a slick social media campaign by Ukrainian forces. As the first digitally native generation, Gen Z is experiencing the news - whether shocking or mundane - through videos, memes, images, and articles online - all of which “is shaping their mental health, workplace attitudes, and financial habits in visible ways” according to Paige Hagy . It’s no wonder that 46% of young workers aged 18 to 26 say that they are regularly so distraught over what is happening in the news that they are unable to function at work, according to a 2023 Edelman?report . By comparison, just 38% of millennials, 24% of Gen Xers, and 19% of baby boomers say the same.

and finally,

And yes, you’ve guessed it. It’s half term, so not much book writing done this week.

Thanks for reading,

Eliza