Three in four women believe they may have experienced burnout in the past 12 months, according to our Women’s Agenda 2025 Ambitions report, released this week.
Our survey of more than 1400 women found that 72 per cent reported burnout in the past 12 months, which is just a few percentage points down from our findings in 2021 and 2023 during the pandemic and its aftermath.
So what’s going on?
Are women finding it more challenging than ever to balance the competing demands of life in the 2020s?
Is it the cost of living? Is it a relentless news cycle? Is it a sheer lack of time to do anything for ourselves outside of paid and unpaid work? Is it the never-ending stream of notifications: work updates, family updates, kid updates? Is it sexism, ageism, racism, discrimination?
Is it the pressure to look and act, care and work in a world that still doesn’t prioritise the safety, security and economic opportunities of women?
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Read the full 2024 Women’s Ambition Report, by Women’s Agenda and supported by AGSM @ UNSW Business School here.
The high reported rates of burnout are likely a combination of all of the above, and more.
However, as our research found, there is some low-hanging fruit that employers and even policymakers can consider to better support women.
Sixty-one per cent of women who reported burnout said balancing home and career life is an issue. Twenty-one per cent said parenting responsibilities are contributing, and a quarter (25 per cent) highlighted being paid less than they’re worth as a factor.
While burnout is often blamed on the challenge of balancing family and career, our survey of women found almost 40 per cent do not cite this as an issue.
But there’s another significant contributor affecting many women: the direct experience they’re having at work due to key individuals.
One third (33 per cent) of respondents reporting burnout highlighted a “difficult boss” as being a contributor.
A difficult boss could be the senior leadership of an organisation, the owner of a small business, or a middle manager in an organisation.
So much of our work experiences come down to our experiences of the direct people we interact with, and it makes sense to see how such individuals can be perceived as contributing to burnout.
Indeed, a large employer can have the most generous leave provisions, employee perks, and documented workplace cultures, but all of it can come undone in the hands of a manager who lacks communication, empathy, or basic decency in how they treat those on their teams.
Employers would be wise to acknowledge this and recognise the damage individual managers can do to workplace cultures and their colleagues.
If employee wellbeing isn’t enough to get moving, then consider the direct business case for doing so: According to research published last month in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, burnout is costing US businesses between US$4000 and $21,000 a year. Burnout can lead to reduced productivity, higher absenteeism and presenteeism, and the cost of replacing employees who quit.
Meanwhile, separate Australian research highlights a positive trend for employers regarding team members’ ability to switch off from work.
Fifty eight per cent of employers say productivity and employee engagement has actually improved as a result of the Right to Disconnect laws that came into effect last year. One third of these employers have reported a drop in employee stress and improvements in staff wellbeing. These findings came from a survey of 600 senior business decision makers by the Australian Human Resources Institute (AHRI), and came to some as a surprise given the years of business and Coalition opposition to the Labour-introduced laws.
Regardless of all of the above, it’s important to consider the 2025 demands on women.
Women’s workforce participation hit an all-time high in Australia last week, which is something to celebrate. But these levels of participation have not shifted the massive imbalance in unpaid care and domestic work that women take on. Women are significantly more likely to be single parents and sole parents. Women still do twice as much household work as men and take on most caring responsibilities, even when working full time. Now consider the additional stresses: the cost of living, global conflict, climate change, and the constant interruption of technology.
We’ve long reported on the motherhood penalty on Women’s Agenda: the long accumulation of lost income and investments that come after having a baby.
Burnout is a little harder to quantify. It can be measured in exhaustion, stress, guilt, unfilled ambitions, missed opportunities, and, in some cases, even illness. But a burnout penalty appears to be afflicting women in 2025, regardless of the caring responsibilities they manage.
Check out the key findings of our 2025 Ambition Report, including the top ambitions women have for the next two years, here.
And download the full report here. Thanks to the support of AGSM @ UNSW Business School.