Mind the sleep gap: Why no one ever notices when women are exhausted

Scientists at Nasa have just revealed a fact that women have always known – we are far better than men at putting a brave face on it when we’re tired. According to Morgan Stosic, a research psychologist at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, observers in an experiment seemed routinely to underestimate how tired women were feeling, whereas men gave the impression they were more fatigued than they really were.

To which I say: what took you so long, space brainiacs? Surely you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to work that one out.

It’s a well-accepted fact that women, on the whole, do not sleep as well as men. According to a large 2022 study published in Frontiers in Psychiatry, we are twice as likely to suffer with insomnia. “Insomnia is a female-dominant disorder: our clinic is 65 per cent women, 35 percent men,” says Dr Guy Meadows, a sleep physiologist and founder of sleepschool.org.

“Women are more likely than men to wake up in the night with cortisol-induced stress and anxiety, usually characterised by overthinking. Then there are the demands of the child-rearing years, the stress of looking after ageing parents, and the hormonal fluctuations of menopause.”

As we age, women are also more likely to suffer from restless leg syndrome and sleep apnoea. So we sleep less well, but have we learnt to deal with it better or is their something hardwired into us to do so?

For those of us who have children, this plate-spinning-with-a-smile comes into its own during the first years of motherhood. First there is the crushing exhaustion of four hours’ nightly sleep as a result of breastfeeding, followed by teething, toddler nightmares, the 11-plus, the first breakup, university anxiety meltdowns… in fact it never ends.

But there we are up at the crack of dawn, dashing into work and running meetings with panache, before tottering home for a second shift of sorting dinner and baby bathtime. Many men in this situation – and yes, alright, we know this doesn’t apply to all men – would just grumble and moan and let things slide because they need a break. This further adds to our stress because we worry that if we’re not there to pick up the dropped balls, who the hell will?

Mairi Macleod is an evolutionary biologist and behavioural scientist specialising in dating and relationships. “The Nasa research is consistent with women’s greater effort to create and maintain social relationships generally,” she says, pointing out that you don’t have to be a mother to have inherited this trait.

“I’d speculate that this is because over evolutionary time, women have had greater need for supportive social networks to help them and their children stay alive. But there’s certainly no biological reason why a man can’t be as good as a woman at looking after his children."

Existing studies also point to a woman’s toughness under tiredness. According to a 2011 report by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, women were found to have less subjective sleepiness than men and less performance deterioration during sleep restriction, as well as greater improvements after recovery.

These differences were associated with increased amounts of slow-wave sleep, or “deep sleep”, in women. “In women, but not in men, deep sleep appeared to have a protective effect,” said principal investigator Dr Alexandros N Vgontzas, a professor of psychiatry and sleep disorders medicine at the Penn State College of Medicine.

“Women with a higher amount of deep sleep can better handle the effects of one work-week of mild sleep deprivation, and their recovery is more complete after two nights of extended sleep,” said Vgontzas.

And yet this heroic behaviour can have consequences in the longer term. “If a woman keeps ‘pushing through’, there is a danger that this can go beyond tiredness, and lead to burnout,” says Maryanne Taylor, sleep expert, consultant and founder of The Sleep Works.

“As women, we normalise poor sleep, and we keep powering through until everything comes to a head, and we can’t do it any longer. This is equally the case whether we are in paid work in a career, or unpaid work, at home.”

Taylor points to the vital connection between sleep and mental health, and why it’s vital to make sure we don’t tip over into burnout.

“It’s so important to heed and act on red flags such as headaches, indigestion, muscle pains, general feelings of being unwell, or increased anxiety,” says Taylor. “If we don’t look after ourselves and keep on pushing through, there is a risk we might come crashing to a halt.”

Miranda Levy is the author of ‘The Insomnia Diaries: How I Learned to Sleep Again’ (Octopus Books)