“Many women tell me they want to have a man in their life, but they are no longer willing to be the only person giving in the relationship. They don’t want to be with a man who needs to be taken care of. In that case, it’s easier and more pleasant to be without a man.”

These words speak eerily to the current moment. Yet their date of publication? 1984.

You’ll find them in psychotherapist and acclaimed author Marjorie Hansen Shaevitz’s The Superwoman Syndrome, one of the earliest books to grapple with the superwoman myth — the idea that women can effortlessly balance work and family responsibilities in workplaces not designed to support them. And that any evidence of struggle is interpreted as a personal failing rather than a systemic one.

Despite its articulation of the burdens women face in the formal economy, its solutions to what is now called the the “second shift” involve telling women to make lists and prioritize their responsibilities. These, of course, are hardly the strategies that will move the needle in improving women’s daily lives.

Similar frustrations appear in another influential work from the same period. In a report written by feminist Shere Hite, published in 1987, most American women described feeling frustrated with their relationships.

Ninety-eight per cent reported wanting more verbal closeness with the men they loved: more sharing of thoughts, feelings and plans, and more reciprocal curiosity. Eighty-three per cent reported being the ones to initiate deep conversations with their partners,........

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