The annual Profmed stress index, released earlier this year, showed that the professional women who were polled reported higher stress levels than the male participants.
Conducted among 2,071 SA professionals across a range of industries, the survey provides statistics and insight into how stressed our professionals are, what environmental and emotional factors are contributing to this stress, and how this stress might influence lifestyle choices.
The reason the female participants reported higher stress levels was largely due to balancing multiple roles at work and home, says Justine Lacy, the clinical executive at Profmed, the largest restricted medical scheme designed exclusively for professionals in SA.
It may also be because women are more comfortable talking about mental health issues. “We know men and women deal with stress differently. Women often seek emotional support by talking through their experiences, while men are more likely to turn to escape activities like exercise for relief,” says Lacy. “Understanding these differences can help us tailor better mental health support systems.”
Someone who is at the coalface of corporate SA and able to observe the trends first hand is strategic leadership coach Nikki Bush. She concurs with the study that women are under more pressure due to balancing multiple roles at work and at home.
“They are doing the lion’s share of household and childcare duties. This varies from household to household and socioeconomic group to socioeconomic group. It is also determined by whether women are married/have a partner or not, the number of children, income, extended family close by, ability to pay for childcare or domestic help, etc.”
Bush adds that women have a perceived role with regards to culture in society, which complicates their role in corporate spaces. “Women carry the pressure of being custodians of culture in society, the traditions of one’s family and the traditions of one’s cultural heritage, on top of performing in the workplace.”
In SA, says Bush, women can hold two completely opposing roles from an agency perspective. “Being a senior manager or business leader at work with complete agency, to being the traditional wife at home with no agency, doing her husband’s bidding according to tribal custom.”
Women in leadership are having to perform to prove that their seat at the table unlocks bottom-line value for the business, Bush says. “The unspoken male attitude is ‘so, show me!’ Men are not under the same pressure to perform.”
She believes that responsibility for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) is falling on women’s shoulders. “They are carrying the weight of having to prove that empathy and inclusion work for the bottom line. DEI is largely a female-driven initiative.”
A worrying phenomenon she has observed in the workplace is that “some women are appointed to very senior positions in organisations with a hidden agenda: they are the ‘work wife’ who ensures their senior male counterparts are seen as heroes. So, there is a double expectation, the one is meeting key performance indicators and the other is delivering on the hidden agenda.”
In addition, there is an expectation that women will mentor other women and open doors for them. “But it is a tough reality to achieve when there are only so many hours in a day. Women are spending so much time and energy on the above-mentioned issues that they have little time to lift others as they rise.”
Unfortunately, many women are placing intense pressure on themselves. More and more the invisible scorecard or recipe for a successful life involves: “An undergraduate degree with honours and master’s; a corporate job climbing the corporate ladder; married with two to five children; a home in the suburbs with all the bells and whistles; supporting not just their own family financially but extended family too (a cultural expectation); have launched and run their own foundation or social impact initiative to improve society; are studying for an MBA or doctorate while all the above is going on.”
She adds: “All the above is quite incredible but it is an enormous load to carry by one person. Some of it is driven by the need to sacrifice as their mothers and grandmothers did to make a better future for them. So, it is a form of activism to continue the fight for the rights of women and more vulnerable members of society. Some of it is driven by societal expectation that this is what success looks like. It doesn’t take into account seasons of a woman’s life and how our responsibilities and the demands on our time shift over time.”
Life coach Judy Klipin, author of Make Work Work for You and Recover from Burnout: Life Lessons to Regain your Purpose, Passion and Productivity, says almost all of the women she coaches come to see her because of stress in some area of their lives. “It is hard to say whether more women experience stress than men because I think women are more likely to seek help, so, although I have some male clients, my practice is made up of predominately women.”
She concurs with Lacy that men mask their stress better, possibly by self-medicating more. “They are also not encouraged to be honest about their feelings the same way women are. The fact that SA has the highest suicide rate in the world and men are four times more likely to die by suicide than women indicates that stress is an enormous problem for everyone.”
The Covid-19 pandemic worsened already high stress levels: “I think that we are all still feeling the after-effects of Covid and lockdown. Our social structures haven’t returned to what they were like pre-2020, we are economically stressed and stretched, and there is a lot of added responsibility (financial, emotional and social) for many women since the pandemic,” Klipin says
“The global climate of uncertainty is a contributing factor to everyone’s stress and anxiety but perhaps women, because we talk about it more, are more aware of the suffering and struggles of the people around us.”
In her Recover from Burnout book and workshops, Klipin points out that according to research, women are more vulnerable to burnout, a state of emotional, physical and mental exhaustion caused by prolonged or excessive stress. “I am sure there are many reasons for this, chief among them the fact that women bear some responsibilities and burdens that men do not; burdens that make us very susceptible to exhaustion and burnout.”
These include the burden of responsibility: “Women have a whole lot of roles and responsibilities to fulfil; we are mothers, daughters, sisters, wives, friends, carers. We work, both in and outside the home. We play active roles in our communities. Of course, men also play multiple roles, but it seems to me that my female clients are expected — by themselves just as much as by others — to play more roles than my male clients are. The constant juggling of expectations, roles and responsibilities is very, very tiring.”
Then there is the burden of patriarchy: “Being a woman in a man’s world (even though it isn’t nearly as exclusionary or manly as it once was) is a lot to bear. We have to fight to prove ourselves, to be heard, to be taken seriously. We and our knowledge and ideas are often overlooked, patronised or mansplained to. Keeping our tempers while fighting to be heard is very, very tiring.”
We get overwhelmed because we are overburdened. And we add to our societal burdens by taking on more than we can manage, by saying yes instead of no, and by not asking for sorely needed help. Which is why, I believe, so many of my burnout clients are women.
— Judy Klipin
Life coach
There is also the burden of vulnerability: “Women are vulnerable. We are vulnerable to emotional and physical abuse and attack. We are vulnerable to exploitation. We are constantly on guard; looking over our shoulders to check that we are safe and experiencing a surge of adrenaline when we fear that we may not be. The struggle to stay safe, both in and out of our own homes, is very, very tiring.
“We get overwhelmed because we are overburdened. And we add to our societal burdens by taking on more than we can manage, by saying yes instead of no, and by not asking for sorely needed help. Which is why, I believe, so many of my burnout clients are women.”
Bush notes that stressed-out people sometimes fall down on self-care, and this has a knock-on effect. “Speed wobbles are regular, or women become complete control freaks. They are not asking for, or allowing support, won’t or can’t let go of their many roles and responsibilities, and this results in health, emotional and relationship issues.”
People experiencing stress and mental health issues sometimes feel they are not entitled to help and support. There may be no precedent in their family structure for consulting a mental health professional, or they believe they simply don’t have the time and experience burnout before seeking the appropriate help. The right support can be hard to find but organisations like the SA Depression and Anxiety Group have a list of resources and can offer short-term counselling. Online psychotherapy, though it does not take the place of a face-to-face exchange, is a valuable solution for busy professionals.
Working women with children who have to return to work soon after the birth and who work long hours, sacrifice bonding with their children in the early years, says Bush. “This can lead to many other issues for both mother and child in the long run.”
Part of the solution is education around the importance of mother-child bonding to create strong family bonds and psychological safety for both mother and child, she says. “This is the bedrock of society. Businesses need to get their heads around these facts and find creative ways to address this issue to support mothers from conception to the time their children are 18 months of age, at the very least. This separation impacts on the mindset of their future employees and customers.”
There should be more education, says Bush, “to help men to understand their unconscious biases towards women and learn to respect their ability to carry children and use their brain and skills — both to express themselves, and for the betterment of society. In addition, help women to understand that they can spread the scorecard over a lifetime and not have to do it all in 10 years — their family life, health and sanity are important.”
The Profmed stress index shows that financial concerns are the biggest stressor for the respondents (35.16%). This includes economic uncertainty and rising living costs. Klipin adds that since Covid “many women are shouldering many more financial and familial responsibilities that are contributing to their stress and burnout”.
“My theory of burnout is that we get it from doing too many things that drain our energy and not enough things that restore our energy. Women tend to be more others-centred and take on more tasks and responsibilities that they feel they ‘should’ do, which leaves them less time for the tasks and activities that they would like to do and that would even out the energy expenditure and stress.”
Finding the right support can make all the difference: “We need to support ourselves and each other to feel less overwhelmed and exploited. We need to put down [the] ... burdens [we can put down]. We need to give ourselves a break. We can do all this by asking for help, by learning to say no, and by giving ourselves permission to make new choices,” Klipin says.
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