Marie Pezé, doctor of psychology, psychoanalyst and founder of the Souffrance et Travail ("Suffering and Work") network, which now has two hundred consultations in France, explains how women are more affected than men by burn-out. "In our country, women have to adapt to excessive working hours, in a work system designed for men," she said. She added that there are specific health risks for women: cardiovascular, hormonal and gynecological.

Burn-out, in 2024, doesn't look like the one described by American psychiatrist Freudenberger in the 1970s, with moral and physical exhaustion, cynicism and detachment from the work we used to love. We now know, thanks to the work of DARES [department of research, studies and statistics] in 2019, that 47% of employees are suffering at work due to "ethical conflicts". The breeding ground for burn-out today is not just the intensification of work, it's also the idea of doing "dirty work." The conditions – lack of time, resources and manpower – don't allow for "good work."

Above all, it's the brain that says stop. The psyche wants to carry on at all costs, because the employee is caught up in obligations for excellence and speed with new technologies, but the brain stops. All our patients say it: "At some point, my brain crashed. Or: "I fainted." Or, "I had a stroke." This is the moment when the body, wiser than the psyche, a prisoner of the speed demanded of it, will reach its physiological limits and collapse.

Yes, the figures in Santé publique France's Epidemiological bulletin on March 5 corroborate what workplace clinicians have been saying for years: Work-related psychological suffering is twice as high among women, who are more affected by anxiety and depressive disorders. In a work organization historically set up by men for men's bodies, women must try to find their place despite that. In France, where you have to prove your commitment to the company through presenteeism, women are penalized by the double working day and the mental burden of family and domestic life, all of which are still invisible.

Yes, it's in this structure based around the 'masculine neutral' that ordinary, often euphemistic sexism develops – "Oh, it's only a joke, you've got no sense of humor" – and, more seriously, bullying and sexual harassment, since women occupy the most subordinate and unqualified positions in the division of labor along gender lines.

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