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Statistics show that stress and fatigue affect more women than men. Why so and what is the impact?
When Jia, a Manhattan-based consultant, read the bestselling book Lean In in 2014, she decided to follow the advice of the author, Sheryl Sandberg, who is Facebook's Director of Operations.
"I just graduated from Ivy League business school, very excited and excited about the idea of accepting a challenge," said Jia, whose last name was withheld to protect her professional reputation.
"Learning to promote myself feels really empowering and I'm 100% ready to prove that I'm a woman who can have it all, be a strong career woman and a great mother."
But right now, the 38-year-old is showing a different tone. For years, she felt neglected for promotions and raises for gender reasons, especially after having children in 2018.
Since then, she has taken on the burden of childcare responsibilities because her banker husband tends to travel more often for the service.
The situation, he said, sparked a misguided reputation in the eyes of his peers and managers, most of whom were men. His views on him were not based on professional reasons.
Then when Covid-19 hit, it was as if all the factors that held back its development became redundant. When her daughter's daycare closed in March 2020, Jia babysitting her while trying to stay afloat at work.
"I'm very unmotivated because I feel like I spend hours all day trying not to fall off the treadmill getting faster."
"But at the same time, I feel increasingly untrustworthy to do a good job. I could feel my career slipping through my fingers and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it."
In early 2021, the therapist informed her that Jia was mentally exhausted. He had never had any problems with his mental health before. "But now I'm just trying to get through every week while staying sane," he said.
Jia's story is symptomatic of an ingrained imbalance in a society highlighted and exacerbated by the pandemic.
For a variety of reasons, women, especially mothers, are more likely to manage more complex responsibilities than men. The combination of burdens is often unpredictable, from carrying out unpaid household chores to paid professional work.
Although the mental pressure to master the problem has begun to show over the past few decades, the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated the problem.
Statistics show that stress and fatigue affect more women than men. This occurs more acutely in working mothers.
This can have a lot of impact on the post-traumatic world of work. So it's important for companies and communities to find ways to reduce the imbalance of that situation.
Unequal demands
Recent data specifically looking at women's mental fatigue show a worrying situation. According to a LinkedIn survey of nearly 5,000 Americans, 74% of women admit to being very or somewhat stressed for work-related reasons. Meanwhile, the percentage among men is at 61%.
They estimate that 2.35 million working mothers in the U.S. have suffered from mental exhaustion since the start of the pandemic, particularly due to unequal demands for home and professional work.
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Many women have to divide the burden between professional and domestic affairs.
Experts generally agree that there is no single reason why women are exhausted. But they widely acknowledge that the way society structures and gender norms intersect plays an important role in this issue.
Inequalities in the workplace, for example, are closely linked to traditional gender roles.
In the U.S., women earn an average of about 82 cents for every dollar men earn. The gap in many countries in Europe is almost similar.
The company Jia works for does not publish data on its gender-based pay gap, but she suspects the impact is significant.
Moreover, Jia suspected many of her male colleagues were earning more than her, something that made her very stressed.
"The notion that I might be selling myself too low is very frustrating, but I also don't want to unpopular myself by asking for a bigger salary when I've overstepped the mark by asking for accommodation for me to take care of a child," Jia said.
"This is a constant internal battle," he said.
Research links lower incomes to higher stress levels and poorer mental health in general.
But some studies have also shown more specifically that mental fatigue among women is greater due to differences in working conditions and the impact of gender on their progress.
In 2018, researchers from the University of Montreal published a study that tracked 2,026 workers over four years.
And because of this, they are more likely to be in positions with lower authority which can lead to increased stress and frustration.
The researchers also found that women were more likely to be the heads of families or single parents, experience child-related tensions, invest time in household tasks and have lower self-esteem. All of this can worsen mental fatigue.
Nancy Beauregard, a professor at the University of Montreal and one of the study's authors, said Covid-19 has reinforced the inequalities and imbalances her team showed through their research.
"In terms of sustainable development of the human resources of the workforce, we are not heading in a good direction," he said.
Pandemic catalyst
Although many of the factors that triggered women's fatigue played a role before the pandemic, Covid-19 exacerbated the situation because it forced us to dramatically overhaul our living and work routines.
Brian Kropp is head of human resources research at Gartner, a global research and advisory firm headquartered in Connecticut.
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