Stress Awareness Month: Why Women Are Still Burning Out and What Needs to Change
April is Stress Awareness Month, and it is a good time to pause and ask: how are we really doing at work?
For many women, the honest answer is not great.
Yes, the conversation around mental health has moved forward. But for too many women across the UK, stress and burnout are not one-off challenges. They are part of the day-to-day reality of working life.
McKinsey & Company’s Women in the Workplace 2024 report brings this into focus. Women's representation at the top has improved, with C-suite roles rising from 17% in 2015 to 29% today. But progress is uneven. Many women are still stuck on what McKinsey calls the broken rung, the first step into management where men continue to be promoted at higher rates.
This bottleneck does more than block careers. It creates pressure to prove, perform and persevere, often without proper support.
And even for those who do make it to the top, the pressure does not ease. Senior women are much more likely than men to be the only woman in the room. That means greater scrutiny, higher expectations and regularly being mistaken for someone more junior. It is isolating, it chips away at confidence and it is exhausting.
When Gender and Race Intersect
For Black, Bangladeshi and Pakistani women, the challenges are even more stark. McKinsey’s Race in the UK Workplace research shows they face deep-rooted barriers, from structural exclusion to everyday bias.
They are overrepresented in lower-paid sectors, underrepresented in leadership, making up just 0.3% of FTSE 100 C-suite roles and more vulnerable to pay gaps. These overlapping inequalities do not just limit opportunity. They increase stress. Being constantly on alert at work takes its toll.
Burnout is Still a Gendered Issue
During the pandemic, women’s stress levels surged. For many, especially those juggling work with caring responsibilities, it never went away.
In healthcare, a sector where women dominate the workforce, McKinsey found that 53% of women reported feeling stressed at work, compared to 47% of men. 42% said they frequently felt burned out. These figures are likely mirrored in education, retail, hospitality and other frontline roles where women make up the majority.
Despite this, many organisations continue to offer generic wellbeing programmes that do not reflect what women are actually experiencing.
Because women’s stress is not just about work-life balance. It is often the result of structural inequality.
So What Needs to Change?
If we are serious about reducing stress at work, not just this month but for the long term, we need to redesign work with women in mind.
That means:
Fixing the broken rung Actively sponsoring women into leadership roles and ensuring early career progression is fair and transparent.
Making flexibility the norm Hybrid working is not a perk, it is a baseline. True flexibility means having control over your hours, support through life transitions like caregiving, pregnancy or menopause, and proper time off for mental health without fear of judgement.
Inclusive and culturally competent wellbeing support Mental health services must reflect the lived experiences of women from all backgrounds, with diverse counsellors, inclusive language and tailored support.
Better data and honest conversations Organisations must track data by gender, race, age and disability to understand what is really happening. Then involve women in creating the solutions.
Final Thought
If women are still burning out at higher rates, the system is not fixed. It is just teaching them how to survive it.
And that is not good enough.
This Stress Awareness Month, let’s move beyond self-care. Let’s talk about workplace care and commit to building environments where women do not just cope, but thrive.