The Decibel - Why millennial women are so burnt out

Episode Date: August 9, 2024

Millennial women are feeling burnt out.The responsibilities and pressures of family, work and caregiving are piling up, amidst the lingering fallout of the pandemic and the economic crisis. But what makes this generation’s burnout unique to generations before it?The Globe and Mail’s demographics reporter Ann Hui, explains her own experience with burnout, the reasons why millennial women are feeling it more and how it can be made better.This episode originally aired on March 15, 2024.Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at [e-mail]

Hey there, it's Mainika. This summer, we're bringing you some of our favorite episodes from the past year. Hope you enjoy it, and we'll be back with a new episode on Monday. So I started working on this piece in fall of last year, and I initially pitched it as a story about other women. I wanted to write about all of these smart, hardworking, talented women that I count as friends and colleagues and just people around me who all suddenly seemed to be falling apart. Anne Huey is the Globe and Mail's demographics reporter. She was researching a story about burnout, and she had been juggling a lot in her own life.

This was peak of the cold and flu season. And so in the weeks preceding this, we had had what felt like nonstop consecutive colds, flus, mystery viruses. We had COVID. I had had a bout of food poisoning just a day or two earlier. So we were exhausted. I was exhausted and spent, my daughter hadn't slept the night before. And then, you know, I just spent an entire day sitting at my computer, working on a story, deeply immersed in writing. And so it was late afternoon. I had just finished writing for the day. I closed my laptop. My brain was still kind of in a fog.

Walked over to my refrigerator because I knew that I had, you know, just a few minutes to figure out what to make for dinner before I'd have to run off because I was already running late for daycare pickup. And then after that, we were going to have to cook my daughter her dinner and then dinner for us, and then I'd have to bathe her. And then I'd have to negotiate putting her to bed, which is, you know, every single one of these steps was going to be a fight. And I was just standing in front of this refrigerator and I just didn't have it in me. It just felt completely impossible in the moment. And then I realized that I was weeping.

That's when Anne realized she was a part of this story too. And once the piece was published, the response she got was overwhelming. You know, there were people who wrote to me to say that they were crying as they read the piece because they recognized so much of their own story in this. There were a few women, bless their hearts, who said that they were cheering and crying as they read it. So I think it definitely touched a nerve with a lot of people. I think a lot of people saw themselves in this piece. Lots of people are facing burnout these days. But Anne joins us to talk about why millennial women are especially affected. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail.

Anne, thank you for being here again. Thanks for having me. So, Anne, we just heard about your moment standing at the fridge, which you later characterized as being burnout. Can we just, I guess, start by talking about what exactly is burnout? So burnout is not an entirely new phenomenon. It is a term that was first coined by a German-born American psychologist. His name was Herbert Freudenberger. And he wrote in a 1974 paper about how he had been treating a lot of people who work in the helping profession. So doctors, nurses, social workers, that kind of thing. And he was seeing a lot of similar symptoms in these people. He was seeing extreme exhaustion, listlessness, inability to cope, stress,

people who were quick to anger or frustration at seemingly little things. And so he coined this term burnout to describe it. It is recognized as a real thing by the World Health Organization, but it's not designated as a medical condition. The term burnout, I think, has definitely enjoyed a resurgence. We hear a lot more people talking about burnout these days. And again, because there's no necessarily technical definition around it, it can be used to describe all kinds of different symptoms. And then often, of course, these symptoms are ones that will overlap with other mental conditions, mental illnesses like depression, anxiety, that kind of thing. Okay. So, yeah, burnout seems to encompass a wide range of things.

Do we have any sense, though, of how common it is in Canada? Any kind of number here? Yeah. So the figure that I cited in this story was 40% of Canadians who self-report as feeling burnt out. And that comes from a survey by Robert Half from last year. But there are a number of different studies that have attempted to measure rates of burnout in Canada, Statistics Canada, Mental Health Research Canada. They've all done different surveys. And so the figures typically range anywhere between 20% of Canadians and 40% of Canadians,

which is a lot. Yeah, it's a big number of people. Yeah. And so obviously anyone can experience burnout, but we're going to focus on burnout amongst millennial women. And this is what you wrote about, Anne, as a self-described millennial. And I should say, I'm also a millennial. You wrote an essay for The Globe that it was hard for you to really talk about this burnout because you felt you don't deserve to feel tired. What do you mean

by that? I think there's a few different ways of answering that. So me personally, in writing this essay, I was extremely aware of how privileged I already am. I have a stable income, two stable incomes in my household. I have a husband who is very supportive and he really actively tries to be an engaged parent. I have a job that is reasonably flexible that allows me to work from home much of the time. And so I have already all of these privileges that I know a lot of other women don't have. And so, you know, for that reason, I was hesitant to kind of, you know, describe myself as struggling in any way. And then I also think that a part of it comes from being a woman and being kind of taught and raised to believe that we're not supposed to

complain. We're not supposed to speak out. And I think that, you know, it's not new that the ideal kind of feminine traits are ones of sacrifice. You know, I didn't want to rock the boat because I felt like I was going to be judged for it. And of course, it's not just you, right? You spoke to a lot of women across the country for this piece. And you've reported that everywhere around you, quote, smart, talented, hardworking women suddenly seem to be falling apart. Do we know how common these experiences are? Like, do we know how many women in this millennial age category are feeling overwhelmed and burnt out? Because burnout is not captured in any kind of an official way, we have to kind of look at the other data, right?

So in that first year of the pandemic alone, over 100,000 women dropped out of the workforce entirely. Even after that initial kind of shock of lockdowns where men started to come back to the labor force, men who had initially lost their jobs started to find their footing again, women continued to leave the workforce. A survey last year by Prosperity Project found that three quarters of women just last year said that they've considered quitting their jobs. And it's not just women who are quitting their jobs. Women are also taking steps back from their career. The same organization, Prosperity Project, found last year that the number of women who are in pipeline to senior management roles dropped 12% between 2022 and last year. So that's women who are actively taking a step back from their careers saying, hold on, not yet. Yeah. So these numbers are kind of all indicators then of this maybe more pervasive problem of burnout. Of course, burnout is not just a millennial thing, right? Or a women only issue. So what is it here that really makes these days, I guess, particularly difficult for millennial women?

Yeah. I mean, you said it and I think it deserves to be said again that obviously millennials and obviously millennial women are not the only ones who are struggling. And, you know, a lot of the challenges that millennial women face right now because of the age range that they're in, you know, between kind of 25 and 45, you know, they're at the life stage where they are stepping into their sandwich generation years. So they have often very young children to care for, as well as aging parents. So that there are the dual pressures there. I think it's important to say that earlier generations of women have found themselves in, you know, very similar circumstances. But I think what makes this current generation of women unique in their burnout is that we're doing it amidst the major and unprecedented upheaval of a pandemic. So during the pandemic, during those first few months that those first years really of lockdowns and really kind of intense anxiety, millennial women were

the ones most likely to have very young children at home. We were the ones, and I am speaking for myself right now, we're the ones who gave birth to babies in hospitals under lockdown. We are the ones who introduced our babies to the world from behind masks. We are the ones who even now are most likely to be holding Zoom meetings from our living room with a crying sick toddler or infant. We are the ones who still, even today, because we're all, I think, more aware of illnesses and not wanting to spread viruses and different illnesses, even if it's not COVID, we're the ones who are still having to make that mental calculation every weekend when we're going to

run errands with the grandparents, you know, picking up groceries for my daughter's grandmother. Is it safe to bring my child if she's sneezing or coughing? We are the ones who are still living out the impact of the pandemic in that way. Yeah. And so like when you were talking about before, like the mental energy. So it's like all of these kind of little decisions that seem to be really kind of wearing on the energy that you have. And I also think that as millennials living in this time, we're just a little bit more fluent and open to talking about mental health, to talking about our struggles in this way. And I think that's a really good thing. When we talk about the stresses of the pandemic, though, I guess some people might argue, you know, men were experiencing this too, right? So

why is it that millennial women are feeling this so acutely? Like why more so than millennial men? I think it's fair to say that the type of burnout that I describe in the piece can definitely be used to describe what many young men and men in general are probably feeling right now as well. But the reality is that statistically, even before the pandemic, women are shouldering one and a half times more housework than the typical man in Canada. That's Statistics Canada figures. That was even before the pandemic. And so the difference with women is that there is still very much a cultural expectation. There is still a very real expectation that's just set by the world around us that women are going to be the

ones to bear the brunt of the housework, the caregiving work. Okay, so yeah, so this kind of idea of gender equity in the home really does actually have an influence on this as well, but how people are feeling. Absolutely. Like a big part of burnout is not just, you know, as we've talked about, it's not just a physical exhaustion, and a mental exhaustion, but a big factor that goes into burnout, according to, you know, Freudenberger back in his 1974 piece, and even the World Health Organization, is this feeling of not feeling valued, is this this idea of feeling undervalued. And so if you think about housework, which is, of course, unpaid, and often, you know, thankless and grunt work, especially the care of the work of caring for a young child.

It makes perfect sense why this kind of work would contribute to burnout. We'll be back after this message. Anne, I want to ask you about how millennial women were raised and I guess how that might play into burnout. Can we talk a bit about that, about the expectations we were raised with and I guess what we're actually facing? I think that's a huge part of this is that expectation versus reality piece described by Andrea Gunrash with the Canadian Women's Foundation. She talked about this cognitive dissonance that young women are feeling. And she was describing this way in which, you know, many of us millennials and especially young millennial women were raised to believe that, you know,

many of the major challenges of feminism had been solved. There was just this idea or this promise is maybe too strong, but there was definitely this idea that if we worked hard that, you know, we could achieve our dreams. Plus, there was just the general kind of excitement around millennials, who we were supposed to be, the promise that millennials represented. There was very much this idea when we were born, this was, you know, the end of the Cold War. It was kind of, you know, Francis Fukuyama end of history times. There was very much go out there and make positive changes, that we could fix the world, that we were going to change the world. And I can roll my eyes at that now because obviously it sounds so naive, but this is very much the spirit in which millennials were raised. And so, you know, none of this is a secret.

We were the ones who graduated around around the time of the 2008 financial crisis, you know, instead of this kind of this great promise and this shiny future that that many of us were led to believe that we were inheriting. record level unemployment. We had and have continued to have massive affordability crisis. Housing has never been as unaffordable as it is today. And I think that for many of us millennials, I mean, we've been reckoning with it for quite some time, but then the hit of the pandemic really is what kind of brought it to the point where everything just became really impossible. You're saying something really interesting here about how we were kind of raised, you know, with this idea of making a difference and positive change. And you're talking about, you know, social enterprises, you know, fixing the climate crisis, all these kinds of things. And then kind of the reality of work, like not even be able to find work, let alone like purposeful work. I guess, can we talk a little bit about how that plays into things as well? Yeah, I think that's an important point because, again, when we're talking about what makes this generation unique with millennials is that we were very much raised on this idea that we should find work that we loved. Because if you love your work,

you're never going to work a day in your life. Yes, we've all heard that. We would find work with purpose. And so I think that idea of really kind of tying our identities and tying our idea of work with our sense of purpose in this world, I think that is new. And I think that that also contributes to our sense of burnout. And then there's also a really interesting idea that Freudenberger actually mentioned in his piece, which is this loss of idealism, this loss of your ideals, and how that, too, can contribute to burnout. So I think that, you know, it's all of these different things that are leading millennials to experience burnout in this very, very specific way. Yeah. And we've been talking about women generally, but I also want to ask you about racialized women specifically.

And I guess, are there differences there as well? The problem is much worse when it comes to racialized women. And I guess, are there differences there as well? Nursing, personal support workers, daycare workers. Those are industries that disproportionately high numbers of racialized women working in them. And so I don't think it's a coincidence that we're seeing, you know, at the same time as the start of the pandemic, many, many, many racialized women dropping out of the workforce. So that's an important piece to consider. But there's also this other idea that these racialized women talked about, which is that there is this additional drain on energy that racialized women often feel in the workplace, this feeling of being an only, this feeling of having to constantly being on guard for or kind of prepared for potential discrimination that can also contribute again to this idea of whether or not a woman feels valued in the workplace, whether or not she feels like she's seen, whether or not she feels like she's being heard. And kind of the burden of feeling like you have to speak up, I guess, sometimes to too. The burden of often being the ones assigned to or asked to or expected to do DEI kind of work in the workplace. There's all this kind of additional work because it is work that racialized women often find themselves performing in the workforce.

And this is not work that they're being paid for. Well, I guess, I mean, one of the big questions here then is like, how do we make this better? Like, how do we as a society, I guess, tackle this millennial burnout? And I realize that's a big question, Anne, but yeah, what did you learn? It is a big question that I do not have an easy answer to. These are fights that have been going on for decades, things like closing the wage gap, things like pay equity. The reality is that women are still paid 90 cents for every dollar that men make in Canada. And that's going to contribute to whether or not women feel like their work is valued in the workforce.

So that's a big thing. There's also small and big changes that I think every workplace can make. You know, there's been a lot of talk in recent years about work-life balance, but I think that many organizations still struggle to understand what that actually looks like, and to understand that that can actually look somewhat different for different workplaces. And then on the personal level, I'm also still learning. I'm not going to pretend like I've, you know, had this kind of major change and that I'm cured of burnout. But it is a realization that it's in how we live. It is partly the world around us, but it's also partly the way that we meet the world around us. And so even little changes for myself, like deciding whether or not I really need to pick

up and check my phone and check my email every five minutes, especially if it's the evening, especially if it's the weekend, those are little things that I can do for myself to protect my own little bit of peace. Yeah. In your piece, you wrote about reading your daughter the story of Little Miss Busy, one of those like Mr. Miss books. And you said and kind of purpose in this world has been built around the idea of being busy, of being productive, of being a good worker, and really trying my best to untangle and unravel some of those ideas and understanding that, you know, there are all these other selves that have value.

And thank you so much. This was a great conversation. Thank you for being here. Thanks, Menaka. That's it for today. I'm Menaka Raman-Wilms. Our intern is Manjot Singh. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin.

David Crosby edits the show. Adrienne Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you next week.