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Long hours, constant availability and pressure to keep performing can be treated as signs of leadership commitment. But evidence from employee surveys, founder surveys and a study of surgeons points to a cost: burnout is common among the women leaders and founders represented in those studies, while demanding workplace norms and structural barriers can add to the strain. This is a documented pattern in particular settings, not proof that every organization follows one standard or that women share one experience.
What does a leadership standard that rewards burnout look like?
It is a work culture where commitment is judged by visible effort—late hours, rapid responses and the ability to absorb ever more responsibility—rather than by sustainable results. That expectation can affect employees and founders differently. Employees may face workload and availability demands; founders may also carry fundraising and revenue pressure, with less separation between work and personal life.
The title’s “standard” describes a recurring pattern across the evidence, not one measure tested across every workplace. The sources use different populations and methods, so their percentages should not be combined into a single burnout rate.
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Leadership and management survey findings
Gallup’s analysis of 2022–2025 responses found that an average 29% of women in leadership roles reported burnout, compared with 19% of men in leadership roles. For managers, the corresponding averages were 34% and 27%. These are separate comparisons from the same four-year period; “leaders” and “managers” should not be treated as interchangeable categories. The figures describe survey respondents, not all women or men in leadership. Gallup’s 2026 analysis also reports stronger engagement among women on some measures, showing that engagement and burnout can coexist.
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When authority is repeatedly questioned
A five-month, multisite experience-sampling study of surgeons found that women were more likely than men to have their professional role challenged or their authority or ability questioned. The frequency and severity of those experiences predicted rising burnout and lower intentions to persist over time, whether or not participants attributed the treatment to gender. The findings are specific to a high-status, male-dominated profession; they are not a representative estimate for every industry. The study was published in PNAS in 2025.
Toxic workplace experiences and mental health
In the American Psychological Association’s 2023 Work in America survey, 52% of people who reported a toxic workplace also said work had harmed their mental health, compared with 15% of those who did not report a toxic workplace. Women more commonly reported a toxic workplace than men in that survey (23% versus 15%). These are reported associations, not a clinical burnout prevalence measure or proof that a toxic workplace caused a particular person’s mental-health harm. The APA survey report provides the broader context.
Why do founders work such long hours?
Fundraising, revenue and workload pressure
In the Female Founders Alliance’s 2025 survey of 180 female founders, nearly 75% said they had experienced burnout at least once. Forty-three percent reported working more than 60 hours a week, and another 30% reported 50–60 hours. More than half named fundraising pressure as the primary cause of burnout; revenue pressure followed at 26% and workload at 15%. Respondents also described trade-offs: 32% said they had compromised their health, a similar share cited deteriorating relationships, and 22% identified lack of sleep as a key trade-off. These results describe the 180 respondents, not all founders. The alliance’s 2025 report details the survey.
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Long hours as an ecosystem expectation
Balderton Capital’s 2024 survey of 128 entrepreneurs found that 70% agreed stress-related burnout remained a significant startup ecosystem problem, while 78% felt founders were expected to prioritize work over wellbeing. Sixty-nine percent said stress moderately or significantly harmed work performance. These are respondents’ perceptions, not independently measured causal effects or population-wide estimates. Balderton’s 2024 report also found that 84% considered strong support networks essential to founder performance, but only 33% often turned to investors for support, compared with 42% who often turned to a spouse or partner.
Balderton’s founder survey page separately says 83% of respondents in its inaugural survey believed that, beyond a point, adding hours had diminishing returns; it also reports that 90% agreed founder pressure drove very long hours. The page does not clearly state the inaugural survey’s sample size or report year, so these figures should be read as that survey’s responses, not as estimates for founders generally. Balderton’s survey page presents those findings.
How do caregiving and funding norms add strain for women founders?
Entrepreneurship is often assumed to offer flexibility, but that does not guarantee control over working hours or care responsibilities. A 2026 announcement from King’s College London describes an “entrepreneurial care penalty”: childcare access, funding norms, stereotypes that exclude women and long-hours expectations can combine to undermine wellbeing and business potential. It emphasizes that wellbeing is shaped by relationships and systems, not just individual resilience. King’s College London’s announcement recommends affordable childcare, more flexible accelerator programs, bias-aware funding, broader definitions of entrepreneurship and wellbeing content in entrepreneurship education.
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This matters because a boundary-setting tip cannot create childcare, change a funding decision or make an accelerator schedule compatible with caregiving. Individual choices can help, but they cannot substitute for changes to the conditions under which founders work.
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What can organizations and founder ecosystems change?
Responses work best when they address the source of pressure rather than asking the person experiencing it to carry more responsibility. The evidence points to several levels of action; it does not establish one intervention as sufficient for every workplace or founder.
Quick Recap
Best Value
- Author: Bungay Stanier, Michael.
- Publisher: Page Two
- Pages: 244
- Publication Date: 2016-02-29
- Edition: 1
| Who can act | Pressure to address | Evidence-aligned response |
|---|---|---|
| Teams and employers | Unclear priorities, excessive or poorly designed work, and demands for constant availability | Clarify priorities, align workload with them, and provide development support. Gallup identifies work design, priority clarity and development as relevant areas for employers to address. |
| Leaders and organizations | Repeated challenges to women’s professional role or authority | Recognize and address patterns of treatment that undermine authority; do not make the person repeatedly questioned responsible for repairing the interaction alone. The surgeon study links the frequency and severity of such experiences with later burnout and intentions to persist. |
| Investors and founder-support organizations | Fundraising pressure, long-hours expectations and founders lacking support | Make wellbeing part of founder support and help build cultures that do not treat personal sacrifice as a requirement. Balderton’s 2024 respondents frequently valued support networks, while a smaller share often turned to investors than to a spouse or partner. |
| Policymakers and entrepreneurship programs | Care constraints and program structures that exclude people with responsibilities | Improve affordable childcare access, offer more flexible program schedules and use bias-aware funding practices, as recommended by King’s College London. |
| Individuals and peer networks | Isolation, limited recovery time and difficulty identifying unsustainable demands | Use boundaries, reflection and trusted support where possible, while treating these as supports—not cures for an overloaded role or a structural barrier. |
How should readers interpret the evidence?
- The Gallup and founder-survey percentages describe particular survey respondents and periods; they are not universal rates.
- The surgeon study follows a specific profession over five months and identifies associations over time, not a result that can automatically be generalized to every workplace.
- The APA figures compare self-reported experiences of toxic workplaces and mental-health harm; they do not establish clinical burnout or causation.
- Taken together, the sources support concern about work design, interpersonal treatment, ecosystem expectations and care infrastructure. They do not show that burnout is inherently a women’s problem or that stronger individual resilience alone resolves it.
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