Working Women's Well-Being Is Declining Faster Than Men's, A New Book Argues. Here's What We Can Do About It—and How 'It Makes Better Business Sense'
In This Isn't Working: How Working Women Can Overcome Stress, Guilt and Overload to Find True Success—which is out August 5—French Dunbar argues that, by improving workplaces for women, it will not only boost performance for them but also everyone; that burnout isn't a badge of honor anymore; and that, right from the book's dedication page, women 'no longer have to abide by the status quo but can, instead, redefine it.'
It's a problem that many women find themselves in: by any measure, French Dunbar was successful, but behind the scenes, she was struggling. Though she was 'doing everything right,' she didn't feel right. The pressure was too much; she had burned out. She resigned as CEO of the organization she founded on February 1, 2020. Her last day was March 13—and then COVID-19 struck.
'I was such a high achiever and had been so conditioned to 'This is what success is, and that's what worth is,'' she tells me over Zoom. 'And COVID just stripped me of that.' She adds, 'I mean, COVID was the worst of times for many of us, and there was also a lot of beauty in the forced pause in a lot of people's lives.'
At the time, she had a 9-month-old son and was about to launch an in-person events company. Like so many women, French Dunbar knew busyness intimately. 'The traditional success track was just forced to be put on hold, and I had to stop, and it was a very long process, but I had this moment where I realized that I had no identity or sense of self-worth in the absence of professional accomplishment,' she says. This isn't working. She realized 'I don't want to completely destroy myself in the name of success and work nights and weekends and sacrifice all my relationships,' she says. And that's where the origin of her new book begins.
'The process of writing the book was just such a gift, because I got to interview extraordinary women who are also thriving,' French Dunbar says. 'And so many of them talked about setting boundaries and not tying every sense of worth to your achievement and all of the elements that just got reinforced over and over and over again.'
French Dunbar writes in the book that there are a disproportionate amount of women experiencing burnout and stress. 'Working women's well-being is declining faster than men's, regardless of whether they have children,' she notes in the book. An estimated 43 percent of women report feeling burned out, compared to 31 percent of men at the same level. Women's symptoms of depression significantly increase as their authority increases, she further points out, while symptoms of depression in men tend to decrease. On Zoom, she further accentuates the statistic that 75 percent of high-performing women receive negative feedback, as opposed to 2 percent of men. This isn't working.
'I desperately wanted to understand why working women were disproportionately struggling and if there was a better way,' French Dunbar writes in the book. She wanted to replace the traditional leadership playbook with a new leadership playbook.
'The way that you show up at work every single day impacts everybody around you,' she tells me. 'And this is why you need to build healthy, thriving organizations so that everyone is healthy and thriving and that people aren't making each other miserable as a result of coming to work.'
It was comforting for French Dunbar to learn that it was the system, not her, that was deficient: 'For me, it felt so validating because, of course, we're women and we're always blaming ourselves and 'I'm not good enough,'' she tells me. When it comes to women, 'we're struggling,' she adds. 'We're struggling in a system that harms the majority of the people, the majority of the labor force—nearly 4 billion people worldwide. Most people are dealing with chronic stress, burnout, some sort of mental or physical health issue as a result of work-related stress in that system. Women, then, are contending with all of these additional barriers, and that is why we have increased risks of chronic stress, anxiety, burnout, all of the other issues. When I understood that, I was like, 'Oh, that means that when we succeed in this system, we're actually extraordinary.''
'When you look at the data of the odds that you're going to succeed within the system, there's a reason that you're feeling the way you're feeling if you're stressed and overwhelmed and all the things,' French Dunbar says to a very relieved me. 'And you're absolutely incredible that you've been succeeding in this system, because everything is ripping against you.'
French Dunbar had been in what she calls 'the hamster wheel of achievement addiction' for a very long time, and the walls eventually crumbled down around her. 'I was so burned out and so miserable that I had to walk away from my own company that I loved,' she says. 'And that is a very common story that I hear, is pushing yourself so far until people are hospitalized or having breakdowns, having panic attacks and then going to work the next day being like, 'That's totally normal. Everyone around me is having panic attacks. It's totally fine.''
Spoiler alert: it's not totally fine. The book teaches readers a new way forward, one that, when everyone—including and especially women—in the workplace feels better, it actually improves the company's performance. This is good not just for employees' quality of life, but 'it makes better business sense,' French Dunbar says.
One of many examples of a mindset shift from the book? It's one that French Dunbar says she's 'having the hardest time practicing what I preach'—the 'relentless pursuit of achievement and tying your self-worth to that and getting so busy that you don't even know who you are anymore,' she says. (Yep. Been there.) 'We are so busy that we don't even have the time to check in on how we are actually doing.'
The reframe? A tool from Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, who delineates the difference between performance goals and learning goals, with an emphasis on the latter. 'A performance goal is like, 'I want an A in French,' and a learning goal is 'I want to learn French,'' French Dunbar says. 'And so, with something like a book or your career, not everything has to be about your next title or the salary or The New York Times bestseller list. It is like, 'I'm doing this for the experience of gaining knowledge, having experiences and enriching who I am as a human,' instead of, 'I will only consider this to be a successful thing if it hits these certain milestones.''
Releasing the relentless pursuit of achievement 'has been a big one for me,' she says, and learning that 'you matter and you are worthy just as you are'—regardless of achievement.
The first step, she tells me, is admitting there's a problem and that the current work culture that society has isn't okay. Check. The book takes readers through what to do next.
'Your stress, your overwhelm, your exhaustion, your burnout—that is not on you,' French Dunbar says. 'That's not a you problem. It's a cultural problem of the way that we're doing business.' But, she adds, 'It can be done in such a better way. There are extraordinary humans who have already done this and have already written the blueprint.'
That blueprint makes up the pages of This Isn't Working. Above all else, Dunbar says? When readers close the book, no matter how burned out or exhausted or overwhelmed they are, she wants this to be made clear: 'There is hope,' she says.
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