Why stress feels so different for women
Still not recognised as a mental illness, the condition remains a taboo in sport due to its perceived stigma of weakness, writes Fiona Tomas
Iga Swiatek has taken tennis by storm with her dominant form this year, but just five months ago the world No1 cut a far more vulnerable figure.
Exhausted after battling through her quarter-final against Sorana Cirstea at the Australian Open, the 20-year-old broke down in tears. “My stress levels were higher than in the previous matches, that’s why all these emotions came out,” said Swiatek in her on-court interview. “A week without crying is not a week. I cry when I lose, I cry when I win.”
Swiatek is one of a few players on the tour who travels with a psychologist, Daria Abramowicz. The tennis star has never been one to shy away from talking about mental health, a subject that has gripped global sport over the past year with the likes of Naomi Osaka and Simone Biles candidly sharing their struggles with depression and anxiety. But stress – when pressure exceeds an individual’s perceived ability to cope – remains very much a taboo in sport due to its perceived stigma of weakness. Unlike depression and anxiety, stress is not a recognised mental illness.
Science suggests that male and female athletes respond differently to situations they perceive to be stressful, due to differences in physiology – though as with all sports science research, the female body remains woefully understudied.
In women, levels of cortisol – the stress hormone which is akin to the
‘Women may experience chronic stress more than males due to certain physical differences’
‘There’s a whole host of stressors that female athletes have to contend with that males don’t’
body’s in-built alarm system – are raised at the start of the menstrual cycle, meanwhile the nervous system plays a crucial role in an individual’s ability to cope with stress.
“Women may be more inclined to experience chronic stress than males due to certain physiological differences,” says Dr Bernadette Darcy, a certified stressmanagement specialist and former footballer who now works with elite athletes to combat stress and burnout.
Darcy says men and women’s abilities to handle stress are markedly different. “Males experience a more rapid activation of the sympathetic nervous system, releasing cortisol to deal with a threat as well as a quick deactivation of this response indicating a healthy competitive response to stress.
“The female nervous system, on the other hand, appears to have a more blunted response to acute stress and a slower return to normal once a stressor has passed. In theory, this would have been a useful evolutionary adaptation when the female role was to protect her young and be the primary care-giver, however in modern life, females are exposed to just as much, if not more, ongoing stress as males, meaning this blunted response may make females more vulnerable to stress lasting longer.”
This conclusion is increasingly echoed across sports science. In a 2017 study published in the British Medical Journal of Exercise and
Medicine, male athletes were more efficient at producing anticipatory cortisol – the hormone released when the body gets ready to perform – before competition than women. With the body needing some form of cortisol response before a challenge in order to excel, this reaction was found to impact performance.
A growing body of science also suggests sportswomen are acutely impacted by stress more than men because of social factors, and particularly issues that are unique to women’s sport.
That is a view held by Dr Darren Britton, a lecturer in sport psychology at Solent University, who believes sportswomen are more likely to experience stressors when competing in sport that are directly related to sexism, and issues concerning body image, amid other factors. “There’s less pay, less investment in facilities and bigger expectations. If you’re a professional female athlete in your late 20s, at what point should you or can you start a family? There’s a whole host of stressors that female athletes have to contend with that male athletes don’t.”
Team selection has also been found to be a stress trigger that can impact female athletes. In a 2015 study involving 1,277 athletes published in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports, being picked for a team was found to be a major contributor towards elevated stress levels among women.
Maddie Hinch, who starred for Great Britain women’s hockey team in the penalty shoot-out at the Rio 2016 Olympics, can relate to the stress associated with the competition for places in a team.
The three-time world goalkeeper of the year has openly spoken about experiencing depression and burnout after trying to live up to a “superhero” tag following her penalty heroics that won Great Britain a gold medal.
“The selection side of the sport is just an added part of the reality of what we do, so of course that brings its tension and difficulties,” says Hinch. “We’re constantly being analysed on a day-to-day basis, whether that’s some type of team cameras in training or the coaches watching. You constantly feel like you’re having to be at the highest level, and that itself causes stress.”
According to Dr Rachel Arnold, a senior lecturer in sport and performance psychology at the University of Bath, there is a heightened need for more genderspecific research on stress. “One of the areas for attention going forwards will be helping females to best prepare for and cope with the changing stressors that they’re experiencing as a result of this proliferation of women’s sport,” she says.
“It’s so fabulous women in sport are getting more media coverage, but are we training female athletes from a young age just like we’re training male athletes to be best supported, and ready to cope with those stresses?”