INT’L WOMEN’S DAY-ARGENTINA: Exhausted Women

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Mar 8 2005 (IPS) - Noemí gets up early, prepares breakfast, throws a load of laundry into the washing machine, and puts vegetables on to boil to get an early start on that evening’s dinner.

Then she wakes up the kids, feeds them, takes them to school, and goes to work. But she doesn’t understand why she feels so tired all the time. "I’m going to go to the doctor and get him to prescribe me some vitamins," she tells IPS.

"I’m so tired", "I’m exhausted", "I just can’t take anymore", "Could I be anaemic or something?" are comments heard more and more often in conversations between women, married and single, at all socio-economic levels.

They can be summed up by what a group of Argentine women psychologists have dubbed "Exhausted Women’s Syndrome".

"The syndrome comprises a number of symptoms that many women share, although most seem to think they are the only ones who suffer from them. They also tend to view it as the result of a lack of something, although it is actually the result of an excess, in this case an excess of tasks, of responsibilities, of roles," Gabriela Bianchi, one of the psychologists studying this new syndrome, told IPS.

Other symptoms include irritability, lack of appetite and lethargy. Instead of eliciting sympathy or understanding, however, women suffering from the syndrome are more often looked down upon by society, for being unable to "cope" with the pressure. As a result, many look for a "miracle cure" in the form of vitamin supplements or herbal remedies purported to boost energy.

According to a study by sociologist Catalina Wainerman from the Centre for Population Studies, huge numbers of Argentine women have entered the paid workforce in the last 25 years, but this change in women’s roles has not been accompanied by an equivalent change in the role of men, who remain largely unwilling to take on more responsibilities in the home.

In Buenos Aires, the proportion of traditional households with a single "breadwinner" dropped from 75 to 54 percent between 1980 and 2001, while the number of dual income households rose from 25 to 46 percent. This phenomenon is seen in the case of young, middle-aged and older couples alike.

Noemí works as a clerk in a retail store. She has two children, both of them in school. Her husband also works, "but he leaves the house earlier than I do," she says in his defence.

Noemí’s husband also gets home before she does. But as she told IPS, he likes to sit in the backyard and read while waiting for her to arrive, after which she helps the children with their homework and finishes preparing the meal she started in the morning, so they can all sit down to eat together.

The case of Noemí and her husband serves to illustrate the conclusion reached by Wainerman: that the "revolutionary" change effected with the entry of massive numbers of women into the paid workforce has not led to a similar "revolution" in the amount of time men devote to housework and childcare.

According to Wainerman’s study, published in the book "Family, Work and Gender: A World of New Relations", only six percent of the men consulted make an effort to do their fair share of work in the home, and even then, their participation is much more likely to involve shopping and childcare than cooking, laundry and ironing.

This reality, which some gender issues specialists refer to as the "stalled revolution", is at the root of the exhaustion suffered by many women who work outside the home but are still primarily responsible for dealing with housework, raising children, and sometimes caring for elderly parents or in-laws as well, said Bianchi, who is also a psychoanalyst.

The problem cuts across all socioeconomic strata, "and is seen in women who work and have school-aged children and parents or in-laws who need their attention. They are the ones who have to take the children to the doctor, to the dentist, to sports activities, to get their hair cut, and so on," she added.

Bianchi and her colleagues, Mariela Apud and María Luvatti, have come across the same symptoms in their practices over and over again in the last few years, and they seem to be almost exclusive to women.

"In the best-case scenario, they are simply presented as complaints, but sometimes they take the form of actual physical symptoms," Bianchi noted.

The physical manifestations of the syndrome observed by the psychologists include headaches, muscle spasms, skin ailments, hair loss and cysts. Some patients also develop clinical depression.

As a means of helping their patients uncover the root causes of their exhaustion and remedy the conditions that provoke it, the three women launched a series of workshops last October.

The first of the workshops, called "Harried Women, Exhausted Women", were held in the city of Rosario, some 200 kilometres northwest of Buenos Aires. Once they had earned some publicity, however, the three psychologists began to receive calls from the capital, other Argentine cities, and even Spain.

"Harried housewives" is a term commonly used to describe women overloaded by an excess of demands, when in fact they are individuals driven to the point of exhaustion and in desperate need of help. The name of the workshop is aimed at clarifying this fact.

In group discussions with their peers, the workshop participants identify common problems and potential solutions. The first goal is to break down the resistance to viewing their exhaustion as the result of social conditions that weigh them down with multiple roles and make them feel guilty if they cannot effectively deal with all of them.

Bianchi noted that the workshops shed light on the social demands that today’s women strive to live up to. They are expected to be independent career women, devoted mothers and loving caretakers of the elderly, while maintaining the figure of a supermodel and pleasing their husbands in bed at the same time.

"Even the women who refuse to comply with some of these expectations still feel pressure for their failure to fulfil them, and this has an effect on them as well," she added.

Given all the roles they are forced to play, many of these women choose to sacrifice the time they would otherwise devote to their own leisure or entertainment. They are often "so tired" that they will pass up an outing that would help them to relax and feel better, although they would never miss taking their children to a dentist’s appointment, she noted.

"We women find it very difficult to ask for help, and we tend to do it as a last resort, when we just can’t take anymore," Bianchi concluded.