Gender plays a huge role in how people experience burnout. Burnout looks different between men and women because of gender roles. These gender roles influence how men and women form coping mechanisms. What does this mean? Let’s check out a chunk from our book to start:
“Girls learn that they are always supposed to be performing
unpaid caregiving work, and so, they learn how to cope
with those demands and stressors. Boys learn that they are always
supposed to be performing paid work, outside the house, and so,
they learn how to cope with those demands and stressors.”
The Culture of Burnout, page 151
Because of this reality, burnout looks different in men and women for two reasons. First, men are more able to deal with common stressors in paid work because they’ve developed coping mechanisms for them. Alternately, women are more able to deal with common stressors from unpaid work because of the coping mechanisms they develop.
Second, since these types of work are highly gendered, men and women are more likely to develop burnout in types of work where they don’t have coping mechanisms. In short, this means that we know men are more likely to burn out with unpaid work – caregiving and household duties. This is because they haven’t developed coping mechanisms for that type of work.
So now we know where men are more likely to burn out. The next question is: do men experience different symptoms with burnout?
Here we run into another problem with gender roles. Traditionally, men are expected to be 1) the breadwinner in the family 2) more emotionally distanced from family life. Therefore, when men burn out at home, appearing apathetic or disengaged, we tend to see it as normal.
Burnout looks different in men in part because it’s harder to see. This is true for both the men experiencing burnout and the people in their life. Whereas women are more likely to experience emotional exhaustion, men are more likely to be emotionally distant. Since this is already a gender norm associated with men’s emotional responses, it makes real burnout hard to see.
What this means is that we have to work harder to understand burnout in men and what it takes to identify it. It’s a lot of work to fight against gender norms that limit how people experience their emotions. We can first start by asking more questions and making less assumptions about what the men in our lives are experiencing.
To take a deeper dive into gender and burnout, check out our book here: https://www.cultureofburnout.com
