We’re (Burning, Leaning, Dropping) Out: Exploring the Post-Pandemic Realities for Women in Online Leadership Roles

In 2020, when the entire world adjusted to remote life–remote work, remote school, sheltering in place–we started to see story after story about how society was finally recognizing the perpetual balancing act required of women in leadership in order to meet the responsibilities expected of them in work and at home and the emotional labor that women carry in both spheres. With that recognition came hope–hope that one silver lining to the pandemic would be changes in workplace and societal expectations for women to allow more space for balance and equity in leadership. 

Yet, three years later, the story has not played out as hoped. Instead, headlines and studies tell us that women are more harried, more overloaded, and more burned out than ever (Aldossari & Chaudhry, 2021; Dean et. al, 2022). In this roundtable forum, we will explore what studies have found in the three years since the pandemic began about the experiences and needs of women in leadership roles, especially as it relates to burnout, quiet quitting, emotional labor, and the need for improved work-life balance and compare that to the experiences of women in online education leadership roles. We will then look at what studies tell us organizations are doing and should be doing to better support women in leadership and compare that to the real-life experiences and needs of women in online education leadership roles.

In 2021, we talked about the Great Resignation, and headlines everywhere proclaimed that people were choosing en masse to leave their current jobs either to move to a job that would allow for a better work-life balance or to move to a position better aligned with their passions and interests. 2022 shows that trend remains, but it was never as widespread as initially foretold (Schuler & Seibe, 2022) and did not always bring about the desired change in those who participated (Lim, 2022). In fact, “Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report in June found job dissatisfaction at an all-time high, with 60% reporting emotional detachment from work” (Espada, 2022, p.8). Even with changing careers or positions, people remained professionally unhappy.

So, then in 2022, TikTok brought us the idea of “quiet quitting,” or choosing to stay in your current position but opting out of going beyond stated job descriptions in an effort to stave off burnout and improve work-life balance, a rejection of the hustle culture movement. It’s not a new concept, though naming it perhaps is. The trend brought an immediate backlash, with people positing quiet quitting as laziness or urging them to move to new positions rather than setting boundaries (Espada, 2022). And, for women, these perceptions become even more problematic, as they are already more likely to be viewed suspiciously for their dedication to workplace environments in comparison to their personal lives (Parma, 2021).

Thus, as quickly as the concept of quiet quitting took off, so too did discussions of the inherent difficulties of women taking that approach (Rieck, 2022), largely due to expectations of emotional labor that women experience, which particularly impacts women in both K12 and higher education (Heubeck, 2022; Bessette, 2021). Women, rather than being better able to set boundaries, have found themselves often with increased responsibilities and worsened mental health in this post-pandemic “new normal” (Aldossari & Chaudhry, 2021). As such, burnout has worsened largely due to the ongoing “work-life conflict” women face (Gupta et al., 2020). 

Therefore, this session will present an opportunity to hear what research says about the pandemic's impact on women in leadership and about what that has looked like for women in online leadership roles, particularly in education. This session is an opportunity to share stories, learn from one another, and to gather ideas for what organizations need to do in order to protect and support the women who help to lead them.

Session Format & Opportunities for Interactivity

This roundtable session will focus on conversations amongst participants in small group settings at their individual tables. We will kick off the session with an overview for the whole group of what research exists on the experiences of women in leadership in the post-pandemic setting, and then we will move into table conversations where participants will share their experiences in online leadership and compare their everyday realities with known scholarship and popular media portrayals of the experiences of women in leadership. In their roundtables, participants will also complete a shared document with key takeaways from their sharing session. We will then come back together as a large group to share our stories and discuss what research and popular media say that organizations are doing and should be doing to support women leaders today. Participants will then turn back to their roundtable groups where participants can share what steps their organizations have taken or not taken to support the needs of women in online leadership roles in order to combat burnout and ongoing over-reliance on their female employees for emotional labor. Participants will also discuss what further steps are needed by organizations to create a more fully equitable workplace environment designed to meet the needs of all leaders in online education. Each group at the table will complete a shared document with their recommendations, and the session will close with each group sharing out their key takeaways and practical strategies for combating workplace overload, burnout, and reliance on female leaders for fulfilling the emotional labor needs of the organization.

Key Takeaways

Session participants will walk away with a variety of key takeaways from this roundtable forum including the following:

1. An understanding of what current research and popular media tell us about the experiences and needs of women in leadership roles, especially as it relates to burnout, quiet quitting, emotional labor, and the need for improved work-life balance post-pandemic. 

2. An understanding of the experiences and needs of women in online education leadership roles based on the experiences of session participants, especially as it relates to burnout, quiet quitting, emotional labor, and the need for improved work-life balance post-pandemic.

3. An assessment of what current research and popular media tell us about what organizations are doing and should be doing to better support their women leaders, especially as it relates to burnout, quiet quitting, emotional labor, and the need for improved work-life balance.

4. An assessment of what organizations are doing and should be doing to better support women in online education leadership roles based on the experiences of session participants, especially as it relates to burnout, emotional labor, and the need for improved work-life balance.

References: 

Aldossari, M., & Chaudhry, S. (2021). Women and burnout in the context of a pandemic. Gender, Work & Organization, 28(2), 826-834.

Bessette. (2021). Call It What It Is: Emotional Labor. Women in Higher Education, 30(10), 11–11. https://doi.org/10.1002/whe.21050 

Dean, Churchill, B., & Ruppanner, L. (2022). The mental load: building a deeper theoretical understanding of how cognitive and emotional labor overload women and mothers. Community, Work & Family, 25(1), 13–29. https://doi.org/10.1080/13668803.2021.2002813

Espada. (2022). How are companies reacting to the “quiet quitting” trend? Time (Chicago, Ill.), 200(9/10), 8.

Gupta, Pragya, and Shalini Srivastava. "Work–life conflict and burnout among working women: a mediated moderated model of support and resilience." International Journal of Organizational Analysis (2020).

Heubeck. (2022). Can Teachers “Quiet Quit?” Education Week, 42(10). 

 Lim. (2022). The Great Resignation Regret: Why the Grass Isn’t Always Greener. Credit Union Times.

Parmer, L. L. (2021). The road to gender equality: Persisting obstacles for American women in the workforce. The Psychologist-Manager Journal, 24(2), 85.

Rieck, K. (2022, September 5). 'quiet quitting' comes at a cost for women and people of color. Bloomberg.com. Retrieved November 2, 2022, from https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-09-05/-quiet-quitting-comes-at-a-cost-for-women-and-people-of-color 

Schuler, W., & Seibel, I. (2022). A Descriptive Analysis of the Great Resignation and the Great Return.