"Not only is women's work never done, the definition keeps changing"
About this Quote
That “definition” is doing a lot of work. It points to the invisible management of expectations that follows many women through home and workplace: standards that ratchet upward, boundaries that blur, and responsibilities that quietly migrate to whoever is most reliable. Clean isn’t clean enough, “helping” becomes “handling,” flexibility becomes availability. When the goalposts move, failure becomes easy to manufacture and success becomes hard to measure. That’s how exhaustion turns into a personality flaw rather than a structural problem.
Coming from an athlete, the line carries extra bite because sport is supposed to be the cleanest arena of rules, roles, and scoreboards. Copeland is essentially saying: imagine playing a game where the clock never stops and the rules committee keeps editing the rulebook while you’re on the field. It’s a compact critique of how gendered labor persists not only through workload, but through the constant renegotiation of what counts as enough.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Copeland, Bill. (2026, January 17). Not only is women's work never done, the definition keeps changing. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/not-only-is-womens-work-never-done-the-definition-38151/
Chicago Style
Copeland, Bill. "Not only is women's work never done, the definition keeps changing." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/not-only-is-womens-work-never-done-the-definition-38151/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Not only is women's work never done, the definition keeps changing." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/not-only-is-womens-work-never-done-the-definition-38151/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.






