Kim Elsesser* says a new study has found that women are suffering from an ‘exhaustion gap’.
On March 15, this year’s Equal Pay Day, women are not only dealing with a 17-cent gender pay gap but also an exhaustion gap.
According to a new study, women feel burned out, less driven and less inspired since the pandemic.
The study, a collaboration of Berlin Cameron, Eve Rodsky’s Fair Play and Kantar, surveyed over 1,000 employees in the U.S. and U.K. just three weeks ago.
They found a whopping 68 per cent of U.S. women experienced burnout in the previous seven days.
Only 50 per cent of U.S. men reported the same.
The pandemic seems to have exacerbated the burnout symptoms for women.
Women reported more exhaustion and less motivation than their male counterparts.
And twice as many women as men reported feeling more isolated since the pandemic.
President of Berlin Cameron and one of the creators of the study, Jennifer DaSilva, says, “I just wanted to highlight that it’s okay for women to feel this way, and that there are things that can help to inspire you again.”
A study conducted by McKinsey and Lean In corroborates that burnout has been rising for women since the pandemic.
Their Women In The Workplace 2021 report shows that the burnout gap between women and men has almost doubled since the previous year.
Burnout is a response to chronic emotional and interpersonal stress.
Employees suffering from burnout typically have “an overwhelming exhaustion, feelings of cynicism and detachment from the job, and a sense of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment,” according to researchers.
Burnout And Parenthood
Working moms may be at the most risk for burnout.
A separate analysis found that working mothers are 28 per cent more likely to experience burnout than working dads.
Challenges for working parents increased dramatically during the pandemic.
This analysis estimates that there were 2.35 million more cases of burnout among working mothers due to moms’ disproportionate childcare demands when students were unable to attend school in person.
The Berlin Cameron study also revealed a telling gender gap in contentment with the division of labour at home.
Participants were asked to select one thing their spouse or partner could do to make them feel less stressed.
The most common response for women was their spouse could “help around the house more.”
Men’s most common choice was “Nothing, I’m happy with the way things are.”
Burnout and The Broken Rung
Prior to the pandemic, researchers tracked thousands of male and female workers for four years to determine the causes of burnout.
For women, in addition to issues of work-family conflict, the researchers concluded that women might also be experiencing more burnout because they’re underutilized in their jobs.
Underutilization and boredom have been theorized to be stressors for workers, which may, over time, lead to burnout.
Often referred to as the “broken rung,” women are less likely than men to be promoted into management positions, leaving many women in jobs where their skills are underutilized.
Instead of promoting women to management roles, women are left overqualified in their current positions and unable to utilize all of their skills and make their own decisions.
The lack of decision-making ability and authority in these positions leads to increased stress and frustration and ultimately more burnout.
Female employees can also be key in helping reduce the burnout of their employees, as they tend to focus more on the emotional health and well-being of their teams.
“Women are caught in the ultimate burnout Catch-22: They suffer it more and also do more to combat it,” write the researchers of the McKinsey study.
Ironically, by offering so much support to others, these women can, in turn, increase their own stress levels and burnout.
*Kim Elsesser is a Senior Contributor at Forbes.
This article first appeared at forbes.com.
