WOMEN & STRESS: LIFE, WORK AND EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN
When I began speaking openly about burnout, I couldn’t find a woman who didn’t have her own version of the same story. What felt like individual failure began to look shared and structural. So we set out to understand it properly.
This research was conducted between Summer 2025 and Winter 2026 with 141 participants — 139 women and 2 men — across Europe, North America, Oceania and Asia. Participants completed a detailed survey and twelve gave their time for in-depth interviews. The participant profile strongly reflects a midlife cohort, with 72% aged between 41 and 55, working across sectors including marketing, media, finance, the arts, science and education.
This study does not claim to establish clinical causation. Its purpose is to describe the conditions women are responding to, and what becomes possible when those conditions shift.
Original research by Eleni Sarla and Jess Perri, for thesage.coach, 2025–2026
“Years of lack of sleep and reliance on coffee to achieve stellar outcomes, what a failing strategy that is.”
“Women care more and are not allowed not to care.”
“I realised my wellbeing and happiness was more important than my work.”
What the research found
knew the word burnout. It is worth asking why we treat this epidemic as a personal failing rather than a predictable outcome of the conditions women are operating inside.
had experienced burnout. 10% were experiencing it at the time of the survey.
53%
didn’t change anything until their body made the decision for them.
78%
felt forced to choose between their wellbeing and their career.
48%
81%
said hustle culture is counter to their natural rhythms and values.
couldn’t identify a single source of stress because, as one woman put it, it all bleeds together.
68%
100%
Balance and joy were the most commonly named desired states, each cited by 20% of women when asked what they want their lives to feel like.
a snapshot of the findings
01 Capability is measured by endurance
The person who absorbs pressure without complaint becomes the easiest person to rely on. Responsiveness becomes the measure of commitment, emotional containment becomes the professional thing to do and your limits get penalised. Women keep going like this because it feels necessary, not because it feels good.
02 Competence is doing a lot of unpaid work
The same emotional intelligence that makes women brilliant at their jobs pulls them into carrying more than their share, without recognition. One participant described cognitive load as the thief of joy, a mind that is never fully off duty.
03 A career built on borrowed energy
Careers built on endurance rather than support rely on women borrowing energy from their health and their future capacity. Ultimately it is the presence or absence of support that determines whether women survive or combust.
The research told us exactly what was going on for women. Six of these findings are:
This research is available at two price points. €125 for individuals buying for their own use, and €325 for organisations intending to share it across a team or use it to inform policy or practice. We trust you to know which one applies to you
04 A recognisable journey at an extremely high cost
What came back from the research was less acquired wisdom and more forced learning. Nobody should be gaining their health wisdom via a punishing modern odyssey.
05 Normalising burnout normalises self-erasure
There is a pattern of adjusting expectations and replacing feeling with function, one that gradually strips women of themselves and presents this as the price of ambition. Normalising that level of strain is pretty ugly.
06 Foundational needs go unmet
Women in this study were not short of ideas about what supports their wellbeing. The challenge is time, money, energy and the psychological friction of prioritising oneself in a world that still expects women to absorb the overflow.