Black women have increasingly been embracing the soft life in this era, but who knew that would come with a side of quiet quitting?
The Start Of A New Era
The pandemic ushered in a new era of work for many people, but this was especially evident for women of color. For years, Black women have been the driving force behind the economy. According to the United States Department of Labor, Black women have higher labor force participation rates than women of other races. This means more Black women are actively working or looking for work compared to others. At the height of the pandemic, workers began to take their power back, and choose their mental and emotional wellness over a paycheck. The trend increasingly became rampant when workers began to put their well being first and either demand higher pay and advocate for their work accommodations. This also led many to engage in quiet quitting, a recent workplace wave that is taking the employment world by storm.
What Is Quiet Quitting?
Quiet quitting is the process of only performing tasks that fall within the scope of a person’s assigned duties. In the past, people would try to go above and beyond to work overtime and prove that they were competent enough for a promotion or raise. In the era of quiet quitters, workers are solely performing activities within the scope of their employment without feeling they need to go above and beyond and sacrifice their mental health for approval in the workplace.
Black Women Taking Their Power, Too
Long before the pandemic inspired employees to embark on the journey of Quiet Quitting, Black women were already doing it. It first started when somewhere, somehow, Black women began to rally together to collectively “burn the cape” and denounce the title of “strong.” Unfortunately, Black women have been the face of struggle across vast branches of life for years. When Black women chose to burn the cape, they also simultaneously opted to put themselves first. This birthed the “soft life,” a movement that radically accepts the art of self-care, self-love, and acceptance. Before quiet quitting became a corporate American phenomenon, Black women decided that they would denounce the roles of being workhorses that had to work twice as hard for everything. For a long time, Black women believed they had to work twice as hard to climb the social ladder. The emergence of the soft life made Black women believe they could choose themselves first and ignore the expectation that they had to do backbreaking work to be worthy of respect and appreciation. This means that Black women have also been quietly quitting their stressful lifestyles to embrace the soft life unapologetically fully.