There are certain qualities women are taught to be proud of: We persevere. We figure it out. We carry the load. We keep going when things get hard. We become the person everyone can count on, which sounds lovely until you realize everyone is counting on you because you have become spectacularly reliable at tolerating things that probably should have changed six months ago.
Knowing when to quit starts with noticing whether your effort is creating progress or simply keeping a familiar pattern in place.
That is why Lindsay Crouse’s recent New York Times essay, “Men Are Onto Something. Quitting Is Great,” caught my attention. Crouse challenges one of our more stubborn cultural assumptions: that sticking with something is inherently virtuous and quitting is evidence of weakness. For a lot of women, that response will sound painfully familiar. When overwhelmed, we don’t necessarily reconsider the assignment. We buy a better planner.
Knowing When to Quit Requires Cognitive Flexibility
And here is where the psychology gets interesting. Persistence is absolutely valuable. Grit matters. Resilience matters. The ability to tolerate frustration is one of the things that helps us accomplish difficult goals. But psychologically healthy persistence requires something else that receives far less applause: cognitive flexibility. That is the ability to step outside the effort itself and ask whether the behavior is still producing the outcome we actually want. Because continuing is a decision too.
When Dependability Becomes a Cost
Crouse points to research suggesting that this pattern starts early. When children were given ineffective strategies for solving problems, boys were more likely to abandon the strategy and try something different, while girls were more likely to keep following the instructions even when those instructions weren’t working. Her wonderfully uncomfortable summary is essentially this: girls learn to work while boys learn to win. That difference doesn’t magically disappear when we put on sensible shoes and get a LinkedIn profile.
Research involving nearly 30,000 employees at a large company found that women received higher performance ratings than men while being rated lower on leadership potential and were 14 percent less likely to be promoted in a given year. Other analyses of employee behavior have found something else fascinating: when men are passed over for promotions, they are more likely than similarly situated women to leave. Organizations know this. Employees perceived as flight risks can end up receiving incentives designed to keep them, meaning the person willing to walk away may create leverage that the dependable person never does.
Read that again without turning it into “men are bad and women are wonderful,” because that misses the point entirely.
Women may sometimes be penalized precisely because organizations, families and other systems can depend on us to keep accommodating. We stay and prove ourselves again. We take another project. We become even more indispensable. We make ourselves responsible for solving a situation that may not actually be ours to solve. Then we wonder why the person who said, “Nope, this isn’t working for me,” somehow ended up with the better deal.
The Sunk Cost Trap Beyond Your Career
This isn’t just about careers. We do it in relationships, friendships, volunteer positions, family roles and expectations we placed on ourselves ten years ago that nobody remembers assigning anymore. We keep investing because we have already invested. In psychology and decision-making, that is the trap of sunk costs: yesterday’s investment becomes the justification for tomorrow’s continued investment, even when the return has disappeared. Meanwhile, the costs of all that heroic endurance aren’t imaginary. Current CDC data show depression is more prevalent among females than males, and women are more than twice as likely as men to take medication for depression. That certainly cannot be blamed on persistence alone, but it is worth considering what happens when a culture celebrates women for carrying enormous loads without equally encouraging them to evaluate whether those loads still belong to them.
Structural Barriers and Personal Agency
McKinsey has also found women disproportionately concentrated in shrinking occupations and less likely than men to move into growing ones. If historical patterns continue, it projects that by 2030 about 64 percent of women could be working in growing occupations compared with 76 percent of men. Again, there are structural forces behind those numbers, including unequal opportunities and caregiving demands. But structure and personal agency can coexist. We can fight unfair systems while also getting smarter about when we stop donating our perseverance to them.
Ask a Better Question About Staying
So maybe the question isn’t, “Can I keep going?” Of course you can. That has been well established. A better question is: Why am I still going? Is the relationship changing? Is the job rewarding your contribution? Is the friendship reciprocal? Is this goal still yours? Is your effort moving something forward, or have you simply become incredibly talented at enduring disappointment?
Quitting isn’t always courageous. Sometimes quitting is impulsive, avoidant or shortsighted. But staying isn’t automatically courageous either. There is a point where persistence becomes loyalty to a version of your life that no longer exists. And maybe one of the more powerful things women can learn is that strength isn’t only measured by what we can carry. Sometimes it is measured by what we finally decide to put down.
For high-achieving women, knowing when to quit can create room for goals that reflect who they are now.
Ready to Change the Pattern?
If you’re carrying a role, goal, or expectation that no longer fits, let’s explore what you want to change and what is keeping you in the same pattern. Contact Dr. Robin or book a call on Calendly to talk about coaching for your next step.
