When I look at this image, I see more than three women. I see three eras of expectation, each generation lifting the next, each inheriting a set of rules they never wrote. The silent battles. The invisible load. The resilience that was required long before it was ever recognised.
And for the first time in my life, I understand that women of Gen X and Gen Y, my generation and the one after, were never actually set up to succeed in leadership. Not truly. Not structurally. Not biologically. Not culturally.
We were promised opportunity, but never given the conditions to thrive.
A Brief History of Expectations
Baby Boomer Women
They weren’t fighting for leadership; they were fighting for the right to work at all. My mother’s generation was required to resign when they married. That was the norm: a generation told post-war work was a privilege they should be grateful for. It was pin money before marrying, after raising children, it was usually part-time and before taking on the role of grandmother. Some incredible pioneers were the exceptions, including those in family-run businesses and pink-collar industries.
Gen X Women (my generation)
We were told: Go to university. Build a career. Have a family. You can have it all. We were the first generation to have a university education on mass.
“You can have it all… but do it all and don’t show the sweat.”
What We Inherited:
- 1990s “work hard, stay late” masculine leadership culture.
- Zero flexible work (unless you hid it behind “personal appointments”).
- A belief that ambition meant being available 24/7.
- Childcare was expensive, limited, and still culturally judged.
Gen X became the first double-shift generation: full careers plus full domestic labour. But we were not told we were standing on a biological fertility cliff in our mid-30s. We were not told the system would demand we work like we had no children and parent like we had no career. We were not told perimenopause would hit us just as leadership finally became attainable.
And we were certainly not told that the 2002 WHI study linking HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy) to cancer, the study that shaped medical policy for decades, would later be found to have flawed and statistically invalid conclusions. A generation of women, including me, were denied treatment that could have protected our wellbeing, cognition and leadership longevity.
Gen Y Women
They were told: Build a career. Raise a family. And earn a seat at the leadership table.
“Be accomplished enough to lead, prove yourself over and over again and be agreeable enough to not upset anyone.” But that table was built in the 1950s for men with wives at home. It never structurally changed.
Gen Y Women Face:
- Wage stagnation and housing stress.
- Dual-income households are required just to survive.
- Social pressure to be a “present mother” and a high-performing leader.
- Being chronically understaffed and over-responsibilitised.
By their mid-30s to mid-40s, many are now hitting the leadership pipeline while already depleted.
The Leadership Moment and the Burnout Cliff
Today, as Gen X and Gen Y women enter their 40s and 50s, the age where leadership is finally within reach, something devastating is happening: We’re burning out at unprecedented rates. Not because we’re incapable. But because the conditions were never built for us.
And the research is clear:
- 72% of women reported burnout in the last 12 months (Women’s Agenda AGSM @ UNSW). In 2025, 38 per cent of survey respondents listed burnout as their biggest concern in the coming two years.
- Women in their 40s–50s carry 12 more hours of unpaid work per week than men, creating chronic time poverty (Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre).
- Middle-aged women experience 13% more time-stress than men (BCEC).
- Globally, Deloitte’s Women @ Work report found nearly half of women feel burned out, with stress levels rising year after year.
This isn’t personal failure. It’s a structural impossibility. The ‘sandwich generation’ effect is peaking. Many Gen X and older Gen Y women are simultaneously supporting children, teens, adult children struggling post-COVID, and ageing parents, all while managing peak career expectations.
Put simply: Women aren’t burning out because they lack resilience. They are burning out because the load has become unsustainable in a system not designed for them.
So why were Gen X & Gen Y women never set up to succeed?
Because we were told to:
- work like we don’t have children,
- parent like we don’t have careers,
- lead like men but care like mothers,
- stay youthful and age gracefully,
- push harder but ask for less,
- be grateful for the seat at the table, even if the chair was on fire.
We carried the emotional load, the domestic load, the care load, the perfection load, the fertility load, and the leadership load. And when we finally reached the age of influence, we arrived burned out, depleted, and unsupported.
But here’s the truth I want every woman to hear: You were never the problem, men are not the problem. The framework was/is and a lack of care by a corporate system driven by profits that no amount of government policy could override.
And while the system may not have been designed for us, we can redesign ourselves. We can reclaim our health, our space, our leadership, our stories. This is not a story of failure. It is a story of awakening and of women refusing to disappear. The world, more than ever, needs balance and a female leadership voice.
How Organisations Are Still Failing Women (Explicitly)
This part needs to be said respectfully but plainly: Organisations were built by men, for men and have not changed enough to support women.
Most workplaces still operate around a 1950s model of leadership despite government advances in policy:
- long hours,
- visibility over output,
- uninterrupted career progression,
- minimal caring responsibilities,
- emotional neutrality,
- chronic under-resourcing,
- reward for endurance over wellbeing.
In 2025, this remains the backbone of corporate culture.
The consequences for women:
- Policies exist, but cultures don’t support them.
- Flexibility is offered, but careers are penalised.
- Leadership pathways still rely on uninterrupted tenure.
- If you get into leadership, you can expect to be paid less than your male counterpart…still
- Performance frameworks reward leader “always on” behaviours, despite the right to disconnect; that’s not the expectation for leaders.
- Senior women carry two jobs: the role, and the emotional labour of holding teams together under resourcing pressures.
- Menopause support barely exists despite 1 in 10 women leaving work due to symptoms. Countless women are also coming back in their careers to more junior roles to cope and leaving industries altogether.
Organisations rarely ask: What do women in their 40s and 50s actually need to lead sustainably? Until they do, we will keep losing some of the most capable, experienced, emotionally intelligent leaders available.
We need to educate multiple generations of men and women on the impacts of perimenopause and menopause.
The latest research findings are showing women not on HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy) lose up to a third of their brain function during the phases of menopause, which lasts approximately ten years. Brain fog is more serious and life-changing than we realised. This is a link to the latest research https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-menopause-doctor-this-diet-delays-menopause/id1291423644?i=1000658864795Link
An entire generation of women, our generation, went into perimenopause and early menopause without medical support due to the government-supported misinformation about the link between HRT and breast cancer. At the exact time they were stepping into senior leadership roles, they were left to:
- Sleep 3–4 hours a night
- Battle brain fog and anxiety
- Experience emotional volatility
- Lose energy, clarity, and resilience
- Hide symptoms at work to avoid being perceived as weak or unstable
Many of these women believed they were “not coping”, “losing it”, or “not cut out for leadership”, quietly disappearing from the corporate world. I believe it’s not too late to turn this dynamic around.
Where We Go From Here
Women can’t wait for permission anymore. We need to rewrite the script. We need to educate ourselves once again and support organisations to make the shift to redefining work and leadership pathways.
Women do not need another resilience workshop, EAP and a holiday. We need space. We need restoration. We need reconnection. We need to understand the burnout cycle and our biological needs. We need to understand the outdated beliefs and deeper patterns that shaped us and reclaim the parts of us that got lost along the way. And We need systems of work and leadership models that recognise our needs.
This is the first article in a 5-article series. Follow Tanya Perry-Iranzadi, as we continue the women and burnout conversation.
Next Article: The Career-Sabotaging Beliefs Two Generations of Women Inherited
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