Dr Fiona Barry is a Chinese health practitioner with a PhD in pharmacology who runs a women’s health centre in Cork. From what she sees in her clinics, most women are running on empty when it comes to rest. Much of the pressure comes from combining motherhood with work outside the home. “Women had to fight hard for the right to work and progress in their careers,” says Barry. “Now, we can be professional working women as well as mothers. But the trouble is when we picked up the professional mantle, we never put down the mantle of primary homemaker and carer. We’re trying to do it all.” She cites a 2023 study that followed 1,000 new parents in Britain. The study found that mothers lost an extra hour of sleep per night over the course of their baby’s first year compared to fathers who only lost 15 minutes. Perhaps this isn’t surprising, considering that women typically get up to feed their babies. “But when the researchers followed up six years later, women were still losing half an hour’s sleep per night more than fathers,” says Barry. “It never seems to become equal.”
Hormonal changes Research, including a University of Texas study from 2013, shows that women’s hormones may have a role to play in this rest deficit. Dr Caoimhe Hartley, a GP, women’s health specialist and founder of menopausehealth.ie, often encounters exhausted patients. “The fluctuating hormones of the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, and breastfeeding, perimenopause and menopause can all disrupt sleep,” she says. “Studies in rats have shown that changes in blood oestrogen levels interfere with natural circadian sleep-wake rhythms so there’s definitely biology underlying some of the sleep changes that occur for women.” Hartley identifies other factors that can impact women’s chances of getting some shut-eye. “They are more likely to be diagnosed with anxiety and depression, both of which increase the risk of insomnia. Restless leg syndrome is more common in women. And the night sweats of perimenopause are renowned for playing havoc with women’s sleep.”
Being always on can take a toll on our bodies. “Adequate rest and sleep is essential for physical and mental health,” says Hartley. “If we don’t get enough, it can have a negative effect on cognition, causing us to have difficulty remembering things, concentrating and making decisions. It can affect our mood, making us irritable and stressed. And it can take a toll on our general physical health, increasing our chances of developing hypertension, cardiovascular disease, glucose intolerance and obesity.” It can also lead to burnout, something that a 2018 study by researchers at Montreal University found that women were at higher risk of than men. In a recent survey of more than 700 women in Britain, 93% said that they had experienced mental health issues as a result of poor work-life balance, further underscoring the message that many women are in dire need of rest.
Rest is about much more than sleep. According to sleep physiologist and director of deltasleep.ie Motty Varghese rest is “a period in which we cease activity, a period void of effortful, focused thought and distracting stimuli and that has the attributes of calmness and inner tranquillity”. While the statistics show that women are losing sleep, there are signs of missing much-needed rest, too. “Middle-aged women today are a sandwich generation,” says Barry. “They had their children later and are now trying to juggle the responsibilities of running a house and a family while working full time and caring for ageing parents. Traditionally, the physical and mental load of domestic and caring work has fallen more on women, and that’s still true to this day.” Combine these values with our contemporary obsession with productivity and it’s easy to see how women are under unprecedented pressure. “Because our culture glorifies being busy, rest has become synonymous with laziness,” says Barry. “And with the cost-of-living crisis driving us to work harder than ever, we have less and less downtime.”
Seven types of rest Barry advises time-poor women to learn from the American physician, researcher and author Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith (drdaltonsmith.com), who has identified seven different types of rest: Physical, mental, emotional, social, sensory, creative, and spiritual. “For years, she has been saying that sleep doesn’t equal rest but is only one part of a much bigger picture.” According to Dalton-Smith, physical rest can mean sleep but it can also mean restorative exercise like yoga or stretching. Then there’s mental rest. We need this after focusing on cognitively demanding tasks, and it typically consists of short breaks in attention. Those of us who prioritise the needs of others over our own can benefit from what Dalton-Smith calls emotional rest. “Bottling up our feelings so that we can look after others will
