#35 I Probably Shouldn’t Be Telling You This: Naming the Gender Wellbeing Gap

What if the exhaustion you’ve been hiding isn’t yours to carry alone, but a pattern with a name?

For almost two years, Kristy has been having the identical conversation with different women in different rooms. In the queue after a keynote. In the lift down to the lobby. In the DMs that land once everyone has gone home. It almost always starts with the same four words: "I probably shouldn’t be telling you this."

Sitting in a Perth hotel room after a keynote, Kristy realised she had been quietly building an archive of women’s exhaustion for years. One story is an anecdote. Fifty is a pattern.

In this episode, she names that pattern as the gender wellbeing gap, traces the data and the biology beneath it, explains why it is a leadership pipeline problem rather than a personal one, and makes a direct ask: help her put it on the record.

In this episode Kristy shares

Why the "lean in" message was never going to work well for women, and what the research suggests happened instead
The stories on repeat: the 27 minutes in the office car park, the search history that has become "a graveyard of half-finished questions", the fantasy of a week in bed just to have permission to rest
Why she second-guessed herself, and why confirmation bias does not explain what she is hearing
Why exhaustion is quietly being written into the job description of an accomplished woman
The Success Tax: the sleep, nervous system and sense of self many women pay as the entry price of their ambition
Why so many women struggle not despite being capable, but because they have learned to perform competence so convincingly
Why Kristy nearly didn’t share any of this publicly, and why she decided she couldn’t expect anyone else to go first
What the gender wellbeing gap is, and why it is "not a personal failing or a flaw"
The headline data: 60% of senior women versus 50% of senior men reporting frequent burnout, and 72% of Australian women reporting burnout in the past year
Why women’s stress response runs on different hormonal architecture, and what allostatic load means when the bad day never stops
Why this turns from a health story into a leadership pipeline and retention problem, and why most organisations are still guessing
The leader contagion effect: why a manager’s own regulation sets the tone for the team
Kristy’s ask: the Gender Wellbeing Gap survey that will shape her white paper and next book
The reframe to leave with: "The opposite of burnout isn’t rest. It’s being fully seen."

Key Quotes

"The opposite of burnout isn’t rest. It’s being fully seen."
"We were told that women need to lean in, but they’re leaning out. Honestly, many of them just want to lay down."
"The shame only survives when we whisper about it."

Timestamps

(00:50) Lean in, and what happened instead

(01:14) The conversations on repeat

(03:15) The common thread

(04:17) Was it just confirmation bias?

(06:01) It shouldn’t be normal

(06:28) The Success Tax

(07:22) "I probably shouldn’t be telling you this"

(08:35) Why I nearly didn’t share this

(09:48) The Perth hotel room and an archive of exhaustion

(10:35) Naming the gender wellbeing gap

(12:41) The biology underneath: stress hormones and allostatic load

(14:26) From health story to leadership pipeline problem

(15:23) The leader contagion effect

(17:26) The ask: the Gender Wellbeing Gap survey

(20:31) The opposite of burnout isn’t rest

Spacious Success with Dr Kristy Goodwin

🟩 Website: drkristygoodwin.com

🟩 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-kristy-goodwin

🟩 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drkristy/

🟩 Speaking enquiries: https://www.drkristygoodwin.com/speaking

🟩 Take the Gender Capacity Gap survey: https://www.drkristygoodwin.com/gender-capacity-gap-survey

🟩 The Powered-Up Table:https://www.drkristygoodwin.com/the-powered-up-table

References

Deloitte Global. (2025). Women @ Work 2025: A global outlook. Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited. https://www.deloitte.com/global/en/issues/work/women-at-work-global-outlook.html
Gallup. (2015). Managers account for 70% of variance in employee engagement. Gallup Workplace. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/236570/employees-lot-managers.aspx
LeanIn.Org, & McKinsey & Company. (2025). Women in the workplace 2025. https://womenintheworkplace.com
McEwen, B. S. (1998). Protective and damaging effects of stress mediators. New England Journal of Medicine, 338(3), 171–179. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJM199801153380307
Women’s Agenda. (2025). Women’s ambition report 2025. Women’s Agenda with AGSM @ UNSW Business School. https://womensagenda.com.au/latest/eds-blog/a-2025-reality-majority-of-women-report-burnout
Nadalin, T. (2025). Stress, fatigue and painful periods: The reality of women's health in 2025. Body+Soul.

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