Why Women are Collectively Burnout (or, Why Barbie Glitched)

We have no female equiv­a­lent to the term renais­sance man because a woman who excels at many tal­ents, in many areas, is so typ­i­cal we sim­ply call her a woman. 

~David Gate, Renaissance

Wow. My arti­cle on “win­ter­ing” (pub­lished January 22, 2024) real­ly hit a col­lec­tive nerve. I wrote that I am feel­ing tired and unmo­ti­vat­ed right now and am feel­ing a deep call for retreat and respite. I received so many emails and texts — all from women — essen­tial­ly say­ing, “Me too!” 

You told me you are try­ing to run at a pace that no longer works for you. Your list of clich­es felt so famil­iar. You’re hang­ing by a thread, scrap­ing the bot­tom of the bar­rel, just going through the motions. You list­ed the many balls that you are jug­gling, from car­ing for chil­dren with men­tal health strug­gles to car­ing for aging par­ents with health con­cerns. You’re per­i­menopausal, menopausal, or post­menopausal — and it all stinks. You have wor­ries about mon­ey and pol­i­tics and the sense that some­thing just isn’t right right now. Every one of you men­tioned that it isn’t just win­ter either, that this feel­ing of burnout has been around so long that it almost feels normal.

I believe women are expe­ri­enc­ing a delayed onset of burnout from 2020, attempt­ing to live a 2019 life that sim­ply no longer exists. We spent two years in var­i­ous states of lock­down just try­ing to keep our­selves and our loved ones alive. In 2022 the pen­du­lum swung us into man­ic move­ment; so des­per­ate to final­ly be able to go that we went, any­where and every­where, as hard and as fast as we could man­age. Bringing us to 2023, where we found our­selves worn thin but still expect­ed to ful­fill our many, many obligations. 

Women – par­tic­u­lar­ly moth­ers – are still more like­ly than men to man­age a more com­plex set of respon­si­bil­i­ties. Unequal demands from home and work, soci­etal norms, and accept­ed gen­der roles mean that far more women are expe­ri­enc­ing burnout than men. To wit, a 2023 Gallup poll sur­veyed over 18,000 work­ers and found that 33% of women are cur­rent­ly burned out, while only a quar­ter of men feel the same.

Complete aside that’s total­ly relevant.

In one of the most iron­ic moments in my writ­ing life, I just went online to search for the Gallup poll to make sure those num­bers were accu­rate. What I saw was that the Oscar nom­i­na­tions were just released and Ryan Gosling, who played Ken in the block­buster Barbie movie, received a nom­i­na­tion while direc­tor Greta Gerwig and star Margot Robbie were snubbed. It per­fect­ly makes my point. Barbie does the major­i­ty of the heavy lift­ing, but Ken still gets the cred­it, applause, and prob­a­bly a pay raise. No won­der Barbie starts glitching.

We’re run­ning on emp­ty but con­di­tioned to believe we don’t actu­al­ly deserve to rest. Rest is a priv­i­lege our soci­ety deems self-indul­gent, a shame­ful lux­u­ry rather than a bio­log­i­cal need. 

While I don’t know what the answer is, I do know that the way we are liv­ing is not sustainable. 

We must learn to take a break to avoid the breaking.