The Pandemic's Heavy Toll on Women – and Healing Resources to Help

By Devaa Haley Mitchell

As the celebration of women’s history month comes to a close, it’s been beautiful to witness media coverage of the many incredible contributions of women to our greater collective.

And while there’s a lot to celebrate, we also need to acknowledge a sober truth: women have borne the greater burden of managing the stresses of pandemic life at home and at work, and women are burning out in record numbers, eroding our mental and physical health, as well as our careers. Two recent studies bear this out.

The seventh-annual 2021 Women in the Workplace report from McKinsey, in partnership with LeanIn.Org, drew from 423 organizations and 65,000 people, including in-depth interviews of LGBTQ women, women of color, and women with disabilities. It found that women are “even more burned out now than they were a year ago” when one in four women were ready to leave the workforce. Today, that number is one in three.?

And the annual Report on the Status of Women and Girls in California by Mount Saint Mary’s University in Los Angeles calls trends in women’s health during the pandemic “discouraging.” Over the last five years, there has been no improvement for women in the state in mortality, chronic disease, racial disparities, life expectancy, or emotional well-being. In 2019, 19% of California women reported a diagnosis of depression. In 2020, that number had more than doubled. Nearly one-third of all California women report experiencing mild to several symptoms of anxiety.

At Shift, women’s empowerment is one of our core impact areas, and we are committed to helping create a world that truly works for all women.

It is essential for women to help each other develop our inner capacities and resilience. This includes learning how to navigate through stress, anxiety, overwhelm and burnout. It also includes continuing to build women’s sense of self-worth and agency, so we can expand beyond our own “inner glass ceilings,” along with the many? imposed by the outer world.?

Those of us in the conscious community can collectively come together to help women further develop these inner capacities, and help all women get the support they need.?

For those that have offerings that can support the reduction of burnout and the healing of women’s mental and physical health — consider making them available at low cost (or at least consider a sliding scale for those who have been most impacted by COVID).?

If you have products or services that can be made available for free — now is the time to share them.

?If you are hiring new positions at your company, please prioritize hiring women, as so many have had to make hard transitions during the pandemic.

Here at Shift Network, we’ve put together a webpage with a number of healing resources from our archives that we are happy to offer at no cost, in service to women everywhere. Please feel free to share these resources far and wide, to anyone who might benefit.

You’ll find those resources here: https://theshiftnetwork.com/Womens-Healing-Resources

Our Shift community is filled with creative visionaries — and we encourage you to join us in mounting a wave of healing support for women around the globe. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for… and our time is now. Let’s be the change — together.

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