So I started working on this piece in Fall of last year and I initially pitched it as a story about other women um I wanted to write about all of these smart hardworking talented women that I count as friends and colleagues and and just people around me uh who all
Suddenly seemed to be falling apart an Huey is the glob and males 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 non-stop consecutive colds flu mystery viruses we had Co I had had about 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 um 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 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 an 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 that they were crying as they read the piece
Because they recognize so much of Their Own Story in this there were a few women blessed their hearts who said that they were cheering and crying as they read it um 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 Ann joins us to talk about why Millennial women are especially affected I’m manica rammen Wilms and this is the deciel from the Globe and Mail and thank you for being here again thanks for having me so an we just heard
About your moment standing at the fridge uh which you later characterized as as being burnout uh 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 uh was first coined by a German born American
Psychologist his name was Herbert freudenberger um and he wrote in a 1974 paper about how he had been treating a lot of people who work in the in the helping profession so doctors nurses social workers that kind of thing and he was seeing a lot of similar symptoms in
In in these people he was seeing uh extreme exhaustion listlessness inability to cope uh stress people who were quick to anger or frustration at you know seemingly little things um 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 uh 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 um 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 uh do we have any sense though of how common it is in
Canada any 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 uh and that comes from a survey uh by Robert Half from last year but there are a number of different studies that have attempted to measure
Uh rates of burnout in in Canada statistics Canada mental health research Canada they’ve all done different uh surveys and so the figures uh typically range between anywhere between 20% of Canadians and 40% of Canadians uh which is a lot yeah that’s a 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 an um as a self-described millennial and I should say I’m also a millennial uh 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 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 um I have a job that is reasonably flexible that allows me to work from home uh much of the time and so I have already all of these
Privileges that I know a lot of other women uh don’t have and so you know for that reason I was hesitant to to kind of you know describe myself as struggling in in any way um and then I also think that a part of it comes from being a
Woman and being 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 it’s not new that the ideal kind of feminine traits are ones of of sacrifice you know I I didn’t want to rock the
Boat because I 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 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 are feeling overwhelmed and burnt out because burnout is not captured in in any kind of an official way we we have to kind of look at the the other data
Right so in that first year of the pandemic alone over 100,000 women dropped out of the workforce entirely um even after that initial kind of shock of of lockdowns where men started to come back to the labor force men who had initially lost their jobs uh started to
To find their footing again women continued to leave the the workforce um a survey last year by Prosperity project found that 34 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 um
The same organization Prosperity project found last year that the number of women who were 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 of this maybe more pervasive problem of a burnout mhm of course burnout is not just a millennial thing right or a 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 swi generation years so they have often very young children to care for as well as aging parents um 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 uh 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 of lockdowns and 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 holding Zoom meetings from our living room with a crying sick toddler or infant uh we are the ones who still even today
Because we’re all I think more aware of kind of of illnesses and and and not wanting to kind of spread viruses and and different illnesses even if it’s not covid uh were the ones who were 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 uh grandmother is it safe to bring my child if she’s sneezing or coughing we are the ones who were 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 MH um 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 um our struggles in this way um and I think that’s a really good thing and 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 why more so than Millennial men MH I 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 uh 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 um 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 this kind of idea of gender
Equity in in the home really does actually have a an influence on this as well about 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 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 uh and and often you know thankless and grunt work especially they
Care of of the work of caring for a young child uh it makes perfect sense why this kind of work would contribute to burnout we’ll be back after this message and I want to ask you about how Millennial women were raised and I guess how that might plan in to burn out can
We talk a bit about that about the expectations we were raised with and I guess what we’re actually facing MH I think that’s a huge part of this is that expectation versus reality piece described by by um an Andrea ganraj with the Canadian women’s Foundation she talked about this cognitive dissonance
That young women are feeling and she was describing this this way in which you know many of us Millennials and especially uh young Millennial women were raised to believe that you know many of the major challenges of feminism had been solved there 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 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 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 this sense that uh the world’s major battles had been fought the major challenges had been fixed and so we the Millennials would benefit from this kind
Of solved Earth uh and that we could really go out there and make positive changes that we could fix the world that we were going to change the world um and I can roll my eyes at that now cuz obviously it sounds so naive but this is very much the spirit in which
Millennials were raised and so you know and none of this is a secret we we 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 uh shiny future that that many of us were led to believe that
We were inheriting uh instead you know we had record level unemployment we had um had and have continue to have massive affordability crisis housing is has never been as unaffordable as it is today um and I think that for many of us Millennials I mean we’ve been Reckoning
With it uh 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 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 being able to find work let alone like purposeful work can can 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 that was we heard that the big thing you know we would find work with purpose um 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 Freud and Berger actually mentioned in his piece which is
This this loss of idealism this loss of of your ideals um and how that too can contribute to to burnout so I think that you know it 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 are I guess are there differences there as well the problem is much worse when it comes to racialized women um part of that is due to the fact that some of the Frontline essential industries that perhaps were
Hit by the pandemic the hardest so I’m thinking of nursing personal support workers daycare workers those are industries that disproportionately high numbers of racialized women working in them um and so I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we’re seeing you know at the same time as as the start of the pandemic many
Many many racialized women dropping out of the workforce um so that’s an important piece to to consider um 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 uh 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 the burden of often being the ones assigned to or asked to or expected to do Dei kind of work in the in the workplace there there there’s all this kind of additional work because it is
Work that racialized women often find themselves performing in 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 how do we make this better like how do we as a society I guess
Tackle this this Millennial burnout and I realize that’s a big question an but but yeah what did you learn it is a big question that I do not have a an easy answer to these are fights 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 on the for every dollar that men make in 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 um 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 I’m cured of burnout but uh it 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 5 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 in your piece you wrote about reading your daughter the story of little busy one of those like Mr Miss books and you said you you kind of you recognized yourself in that right it’s
It’s coming to recognize How Deeply intwined kind of with my my sense of self is with this idea of work um how much of my own identity and kind of purpose in this world uh has been built around the idea of being busy of being productive of being a good
Worker um 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 Min that’s it for today I’m man ramman
Wilms our intern is mot Singh our producers are meline white Cheryl southernland and Rachel Levy McLaughlin David Crosby edits the show show Adrien Chung is our senior producer and Angela Penza is our executive editor thanks so much for listening and I’ll talk to you next week
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.
Read more:
Follow The Globe and Mail
Instagram:
Twitter:
Facebook:
