Burnout in Higher Education

March is Women’s History Month. As such, we explore ways to better support women  faculty and specifically ways to prevent burnout. Women in academia—faculty, administrators, staff, and students—often face a disproportionate burden. They must navigate systemic inequities, balance personal and professional responsibilities, and take on significant service. These realities contribute to alarmingly high burnout rates. The International Classification of Diseases defines “burnout” as an occupational phenomenon, rather than a medical condition.1  Burnout is characterized by three dimensions: exhaustion, negative feelings towards one’s job, and reduced professional efficacy.2  According to Higher Ed’s 2022 Survey of College and University Chief Academic Officers, 69% of women report experiencing burnout in higher education.3   

Women in higher education have made considerable progress in increasing their representation in both faculty and administrative roles. However, persistent gendered expectations, institutional biases, and the disproportionate distribution of service work have contributed to widespread burnout among women.4  

This week, we explore gendered roles in the workplace and the effect of burnout among women faculty and staff. We also offer different ways that advocates and allies can help to alleviate that burden to prevent burnout.   

The Ivory Ceiling

One major factor contributing to burnout among women in higher education is the disproportionate service work they perform. Service work, including mentoring students, serving on committees, and diversity-related initiatives, often falls more heavily on women. Several studies have shown that male faculty members dedicated more time to research than women faculty. However, this difference in time allocation was not due to higher productivity but rather because men were more protective of their time.5 Women spend more time on service work, which is beneficial to building communities  within a university, but that service work is not as highly valued, particularly at research intensive universities.6 

Research by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) found that women early in their careers were more likely to take on service roles, such as department chair or associate chair. This significantly delayed their promotion to full professor. In contrast, men in associate professor positions who did not take on these service roles experienced no such delay in their promotions. 7  The AAUP study found that although men and women associate professors worked about the same amount of time each week—around  64 hours —the way they spent their time was different.  

On average, men spent about seven and a half more hours each week doing research than women. Over a year, this adds up to over 200 more hours of research time for men. Meanwhile, women spent about an hour more each week teaching, two more hours mentoring students, and nearly five more hours doing service work. This means women spent around 220 more hours each year on teaching, mentoring, and service than their male colleagues.8 In some cases, women faculty are eager to dedicate time to research, but their efforts are increasingly consumed by non-research tasks. As a result, it's no surprise that they face burnout earlier and more rapidly than men.    

Covering

Kenji Yoshino, author of Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights, introduces the concept of covering, which refers to the subtle ways individuals downplay or conceal aspects of their identity to fit into dominant cultural norms or avoid discrimination.11 Covering is different from passing, where a person hides a stigmatized identity entirely; instead, covering involves minimizing the visibility or influence of that identity in certain contexts. Yoshino argues that covering places an unfair burden on individuals from marginalized or underrepresented groups, forcing them to suppress parts of themselves to gain acceptance or success in professional and social spaces.  

One of the examples Yoshino offers to illustrate covering is the experience of working mothers. He explains that some women intentionally avoid displaying pictures of their children in their office or openly discussing their roles as mothers to avoid being perceived as less committed or competent in their jobs. By doing so, these women are covering their identities as mothers to conform to patriarchal norms that often value productivity and career dedication over family life. This form of covering stems from workplace biases that associate motherhood with reduced capacity or commitment, causing women to downplay their parental status to protect their professional reputation.  

Gender Roles

As we approach the five-year anniversary of the Covid shutdown, new insights have emerged regarding the impact of lockdowns, particularly the additional burdens placed on women within families. Eight out of ten mothers reported overseeing remote schooling while also holding down a job.12   Antidepressant use went up among women.13  Gendered roles in the home influenced women feeling overwhelmed. Factors such as gendered expectations in service roles, a lack of work-life balance, and the emotional labor associated with mentorship and student support all play a significant role in experiencing burnout.  

Progress has been made in expanding opportunities for women, yet the pressure to "have it all" can be overwhelming—especially in a world where the communal support of a village is increasingly rare. By working together, we can find meaningful ways to ease unnecessary burdens on the essential members of our communities.  

Ally Tips

Normalize Family Life: Men can help normalize the importance of family and the value of child-rearing responsibilities—such as attending a child’s play or athletic event or taking time off work to care for a sick child—by openly communicating their reasons for prioritizing these commitments. By acknowledging and vocalizing family obligations in professional settings, they create a culture where women also feel empowered to share and embrace their own familial responsibilities and joys.  

Transparent and Equitable Workload Distribution – Universities should establish clear guidelines and tracking systems to ensure service tasks are fairly and equitably assigned. A system for tracking service contributions can help prevent certain faculty members from becoming overburdened, while ensuring that others are held accountable for their share of contributions.  

Departmental Accountability – Academic departments should regularly review service assignments and ensure that workloads are balanced. Chairs and deans and merit review committees can oversee the equitable distribution of service work and intervene when disparities arise.  

Formal Recognition of all Types of Service – Service is formally valued in tenure and promotion decisions, but the definition of what counts as formal service is often limited or ambiguous. If all service contributions are recognized as critical academic work, rather than some types of service only considered an afterthought, it may reduce the expectation that women take on more of these less-valued responsibilities out of a sense of obligation. Both formal, "on paper" service and the often-overlooked, less-valued, "invisible" service must be acknowledged, as the latter is only invisible because institutions fail to count and value it despite its essential role in their functioning. 

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