When asked about work-life balance in a speech to Girls in Tech, Leah Culver, founder of the now defunct micro-blogging site Pownce, said, “Pick one or the other, make your choices, whatever makes you happy.” The “life” in “work-life balance” is often a gendered euphemism for family and children. The prioritization of work implied that these things were unimportant; I did not hear any young men discussing their concerns in this area. The common attitude was that one could not have both; the underlying implication was that one should pick work.

Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, loc. 184