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By Jasmine Jones
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We have turned burnout into a badge of honor. A woman is exhausted and overextended, and the supposed cure is familiar: take a bath, book a vacation, delegate a few tasks, then get back to work.
But what if she cannot remember the last time she felt like herself? What if the problem is not her calendar, but her identity?
I believe we have mistaken the symptom for the crisis. Many women are not simply exhausted by everything they do; they are exhausted by years of becoming everything everyone else needs them to be.
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The consequences extend far beyond individual well-being. Gallup's Q4 2025 data, published in 2026, found that 31 percent of full-time employed U.S. women very often or always feel burned out at work, compared with 23 percent of men.
Women simultaneously report stronger engagement and greater motivation to pursue career growth. This is the contradiction we should be examining: women are showing up, performing, and aspiring while carrying a level of strain that threatens their capacity to keep doing it.
The International Labor Organization estimated that 708 million women worldwide were outside the labor force in 2023 because of unpaid care responsibilities. Care work keeps families, economies, and communities functioning, yet women continue to absorb a disproportionate share of it.
The effects of female burnout can, therefore, extend beyond the woman experiencing it. It reaches children, partners, workplaces, households, and communities.
It Begins With a Thought
I believe burnout often begins with a thought long before it becomes exhaustion. "If I say no, what will they think? If I do not handle this, who will? If I stop being useful, will I still be valued?"
Those thoughts can become an internal script. I call it "stinking thinking," the negative dialogue that teaches women to measure their worth through availability, sacrifice, and approval.
Eventually, a woman can become exceptionally skilled at meeting expectations and profoundly disconnected from herself.
Identity is not supposed to remain frozen. The answer to "Who am I?" changes as life changes. The woman in her twenties may want something entirely different from the woman she becomes in her thirties, forties, or sixties.
Throughout our lives, careers change, families change, friendships change, bodies change, and ambitions change. Why should identity remain untouched?
Yet women are often taught to experience this evolution as guilt. We stay loyal to roles, relationships, and expectations that no longer fit because we fear disappointing people who benefited from the old version of us.
A life built around an outdated identity can become a remarkably efficient machine for producing burnout.
Early Signs
Some of those patterns start in childhood. Girls can absorb powerful messages about obedience, approval and self-sacrifice. A child who learns that saying no is disrespectful may become an adult who experiences every boundary as a moral failure.
A child who learns to chase acceptance after rejection or exclusion can spend adulthood working toward belonging, which should never have to be earned.
This is where the issue becomes generational. If we teach children to suppress their emotions, we should not be surprised if some struggle later to identify and express their needs.
I want children to be able to ask questions, process difficult feelings, and understand the reasons behind boundaries: "What are you feeling? How are you processing this? Have I hurt you?"
These questions build emotional vocabulary. They also teach children that their internal world deserves attention.
That lesson could change more than one childhood, with its impact cascading into workplaces, relationships, and communities decades later.
Identity Can Be Protective
We also need to stop confusing self-care with self-reconnection. A vacation can restore energy. Sleep can restore the body. A quiet coffee can restore a moment of peace. None of these answers the deeper question: "Who am I becoming?"
Reconnection can begin with 10 or 15 minutes, intentionally protected from everyone else’s demands. Revisit an old interest. Try something unfamiliar. Pay attention to what gives you energy and what consistently drains it.
The objective is not to manufacture another perfect wellness routine. It is to hear yourself again.
A strong sense of identity can be protective. Knowing who you are makes it easier to know what belongs to you, what does not, where your boundaries sit, and which obligations actually reflect your purpose.
A 2020 study of doctors, nurses and medical students in New Zealand found that greater self-compassion was associated with lower burnout and better quality of life, although the cross-sectional study could not establish causation.
A Cultural Warning
Burnout deserves to be taken seriously as a workplace and public health issue. But we should also recognize it as a cultural warning. A woman who has spent years abandoning herself to remain useful eventually pays a price. So does everyone who depends on her.
The question, then, is not simply: "How much more can women handle?" It is: "What would change if women stopped measuring their worth by how much they could carry?"
Perhaps the most powerful intervention for burnout is giving women permission to put some of their responsibilities down and remember who they are without it.
Jasmine Jones is an identity coach, author, and the founder of J. V’nese, a mentorship platform dedicated to helping women.
The views expressed are the author's own.
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