November 11, 2011. By Larissa Faw contributed to Forbes.com
This is why a growing number of young professional women who seem to “have it all” are burning out at work before they reach 30.
Young professional women may not relate to the financial struggles their
Millennial peers are protesting against during the Occupy New York movement. After
all, these ambitious go-getters are working as doctors, lawyers, engineers, and
advertising executives, blessed with great salaries, health benefits, and paid
vacation.
But these women understand the protestors’ frustration and unhappiness over
the fact that their lives aren’t supposed to turn out this way. This is why a
growing number of young professional women who seem to “have it all” are burning
out at work before they reach 30.
These early career flameouts are reflected through the corporate ladder.
Today, 53% of corporate entry-level jobs are held by women, a percentage that
drops to 37% for mid-management roles and 26% for vice presidents and senior
managers, according to McKinsey research. Men are
twice as likely as women to advance at each career transition stage. One
rationale is that men are more likely than women to do things that help their
personal wellbeing at work, thus negating burnout, according to the Captivate Network. Men are 25% more likely to take breaks
throughout the day for personal activities, 7% more likely to take a walk, 5%
more likely to go out to lunch, and 35% more likely to take breaks “just to
relax.”
It seems relaxation is something Millennial women have never experienced. One
reason that women are burning out early in their careers is that they have
simply reached their breaking point after spending their childhoods developing
well-rounded resumes. “These women worked like crazy in school, and in college,
and then they get into the workforce and they are exhausted,” says Melanie
Shreffler of the youth marketing blog Ypulse.
Many also didn’t think of their lives beyond landing the initial first job.
“They need to learn life is a marathon, not a sprint,” says Kelly Cutrone, president of People’s Revolution PR and author
of Go Outside If You Need To Cry. Ypulse’s Shreffler adds, “They expected
things to be better now that they’ve arrived and made it. But instead they are
starting over on the bottom rung and still striving. You can’t see the end of
the tunnel because they are so many twists and turns. It’s impossible to see
what life will be like in 20 years these days. It’s hard to look just 3-4 years
in the future. They don’t know what they are striving for, which makes it really
hard to move forward.”
Even those who did plot out their lives past the initial first career have
unrealistic expectations about full-time employment. It’s not as if these women
expected their jobs to be parties and good times, but many underestimated the
actual day-to-day drudgery. “College is nothing more than a baby-sitting
service. These students are totally unprepared for the real world. The reality
for women who want to work in PR is that they are going to be working with 24
catty [women] who will backstab and compete with them. No one will say thank
you. You will eat lunch at 5 p.m. It sucks and it’s hard work,” says
Cutrone.
All of this unhappiness has left young women struggling over their next move.
Simply quitting or changing careers isn’t an option because the education for
their professional jobs has burdened them with substantial student debt. Also,
while earlier generations may have opted out of the workforce through marriage
or motherhood, these paths aren’t viable for these self-sufficient women, who
either are still single or unwilling to be fully supported by men.
Instead, Millennial women are tapping into their Type-A personalities to
combat this fatigue. “It’s important to analyze what is causing the
dissatisfaction,” says Purdue University’s Teri Thompson. “The old adage, ‘Out of
the frying pan and into the kettle’ is filled with wisdom: often we leave a job
because of unhappiness and in our zeal to get away, we fall right back into the
same traps, the same situations.” Therefore, these women are requesting more
flexible schedules or seeking different work responsibilities. Many are turning
to therapists and prescription medicines, as well as explore alternative
remedies, including acupuncture, yoga, and even psychics.
Ultimately these women are going through the difficult realization that they
may have to redefine their goals and come up with different measures of success
in order to thrive in the corporate world, says Thompson. “It often takes many
years to really understand one’s strengths and where one finds happiness. In a
sense, I do think it’s unrealistic to assume a long sought-after job can bring
one such happiness that one’s searching is done. We’re all a work in progress;
new inputs—from new friends to new places visited—mean we’re constantly changing
in our thoughts of what’s desired, what’s possible, what’s fun, what we want to
do.”
