Are you constantly caught in a cycle of overworking to prove your worth? Have you noticed that some people seem to carry an even heavier burden of expectations than others?
Devon Price’s eye-opening book, Laziness Does Not Exist, explores how the lazy stereotype disproportionately impacts marginalized communities. His research reveals how people facing discrimination often work twice as hard just to receive the same recognition as their peers.
Find out how breaking free from these harmful expectations could transform your life.
The Added Weight of Marginalization
While the fear of being considered lazy plagues every level of society, Price argues that the lazy stereotype is especially hard-hitting for people who face discrimination due to ethnicity, gender, disability, or sexual orientation. People in these groups often feel compelled to work more than others just to prove their worth, while societal roles and expectations can add to their already heavy loads.
Price says that to succeed professionally, members of underrepresented groups are often forced to suppress their identities and conform to cultural norms in the workplace. Many marginalized people use achievements to “earn” acceptance in their careers. Their fear that they’ll be labeled as lazy for not overperforming is valid, thanks to a long history of prejudice that promotes that message. However, constantly trying to prove your worth is exhausting and unfulfilling. Regardless, our productivity-obsessed culture makes lots of people work doubly hard—both to overcome harmful identity-based stereotypes and to conform to societal expectations about achievement.
(Shortform note: Another consequence of the extra burden that marginalized people experience is that productivity culture perpetuates the cycle of marginalization. In Rest Is Resistance, Tricia Hersey explains that because people lower on the income scale have to work longer just to make ends meet, they’re unable to get the amount of sleep needed to maintain mental and physical health. In the US, because poverty rates are higher among Black Americans, this means that Black people on average get fewer hours of sleep, leading to a higher rate of health issues that stem from exhaustion. Therefore, instead of hard work helping people gain acceptance, as Price says many are pressured to do, it leads to burnout and physical collapse.)
Stereotypes and expectations don’t stay confined to work—they follow many of us home. In particular, Price writes that thanks to traditional gender norms, women shoulder an unequal burden of domestic labor on top of their careers. This includes housework, parenting duties, arranging social gatherings, and providing emotional care for family members. For modern women, all this work comes after being drained and exhausted by overwork at work. And yet, even in the 21st century, many women find themselves taking on the weight of what Price argues are long-outdated gender role expectations.
(Shortform note: In Burnout, Amelia and Emily Nagoski argue that the extra working burden Price illustrates for women isn’t limited to their careers and family life. In addition, they must work for their voices to be heard within the confines of patriarchal society while also working to meet unrealistic body standards that are promulgated through various media and advertisements. The Nagosaki sisters suggest that to avoid burning out from all this overwork, you must manage both your stressors and the stress they cause—a process that, in its way, asks for even more work in the name of self-care.)
