Four possible reasons women are more stressed in college than men

Story at a glance

• Women are more likely than men to report feeling stressed or worried while in college.

• Experts are not certain why this gender gap exists.

• They suggest several potential causes: Female students’ familial responsibilities, sexism, the different ways men and women cope with stressors and the higher likelihood that women will speak about their troubles.

Students across the country are grappling with feelings of depression and anxiety, especially following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic — and women, it appears, are being hit by those feelings particularly hard. 

This past spring, 72 percent of female students in four-year undergraduate programs reported feeling stress “a lot of the prior” day while 56 percent of male students said the same, according to recently released Gallup poll findings.

“There has been a clear trend for decades now where female college students report higher perceived stress than male college students,” said Brent Maximin, a lecturer in the psychology department at The City College of New York.

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Why does that gender gap exist? While research shows it does, experts have not yet come to a consensus on the reason for it.

Here are four possible causes they’ve put forward.

Female students are more likely to bear familial responsibilities

Some scholars believe the gap is in part due to “role overload” among women because of gender differences in familial responsibilities like being a caregiver for older or sick relatives or children.

“We know from various studies, both on college students and non-college students, that women are more likely to experience role overload and conflict … balancing family responsibilities, group responsibilities and students’ responsibilities,” said Maximin.

Women make up a disproportionate share of the roughly 5 million informal student caregivers in the United States. In one 2022 study of 7,592 student caregivers, 69.9 percent were women.  

“Caregivers for the chronically ill or elderly (but not for a minor) faced heightened emotional and academic risk,” the study states. “Specifically, caregiving for 3-5 days per week was associated with lower GPA, and caregiving more hours per day was linked to greater anxiety and depressive symptoms.”

Female students experience sexism on campus

Another theory is that daily sexism on college and university campuses is contributing to stress levels among female students.

“Oftentimes women experience discrimination and the perception that they need to be twice as good and that likely has some effect on their perceived stress,” said Maximin.

More extreme forms of sexism like sexual harassment or sexual assault may contribute to women experiencing higher levels of stress or worry while pursuing their degrees as well.

Among undergraduate students, 26.4 percent of women experience rape or sexual assault through physical force, violence or incapacitation while 6.8 percent of men experience the same, according to a 2019 survey from the Association of American Universities.

Male and female students deal with stress in different ways

Yet another possibility is that college-aged women report experiencing more stress and worry because of how they manage those feelings.

Women are more likely to cope with stress with emotion-centered strategies like rumination, or repetitive thinking or dwelling on negative feelings, according to Maximin.

This cycle of negative thinking can greatly contribute to depression and anxiety, but can also be a by-product of both conditions, research shows.

Meanwhile, many men may be turning to alcohol as a means of coping with their own stress, suggests Karen Sokolowski, director of counseling and psychological services at the State University of New York at Albany.

“Traditionally we are seeing men report more drinking than women and that could be a coping technique,” she said.

“Maybe men are more likely to or feel more comfortable turning to things like alcohol or other substances.”

Men in college or university drink more often and in larger quantities than their female counterparts, research shows. However, there is also research that suggests women consume more alcohol when they drink.   

Female students are more likely to report and seek treatment for stress

Yet another theory is that male and female students both experience similar stressors, but that women are more likely to admit it.

While conducting research in 2021 on college students and stress, B. Sue Graves, an associate professor at Florida Atlantic University, observed that female students were far more likely to share their troubles with others.

“One thing that surprised me a little bit was that they did a little bit more venting than the males,” said Graves.

Men in general are less likely to seek out help for their mental health than women. Almost one in four women received mental health treatment in 2019 while only 13.4 percent of men did the same, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A 2023 report from Statista, an online platform for data gathering and visualization, found that only 12.1 percent of men in the United States received any mental health treatment or counseling in 2021.

This is thought to be because men following traditional behavior norms associated with masculinity “are sometimes hesitant to report distress but, nonetheless, are feeling it,” according to Chris Eisenbarth, a professor at the department of health, physical education and recreation at Weber State University.

That gender difference in mental health treatment exists at colleges and universities as well. Female undergraduates are far more likely to seek out mental health services, especially for conditions like anxiety and depression.

Data from the American College Health Association shows that 27.9 percent of women who took part in the 2019 college health assessment survey were diagnosed or treated for anxiety. And 22.4 percent of female respondents said they were diagnosed or treated for depression that year.

Meanwhile, just 12.6 percent of male students who took part in the survey admitted that they had been diagnosed or treated for anxiety and 11.6 percent for depression in the same time span.

That difference holds true at the State University of New York at Albany, where women are more likely to use counseling services than men, according to Sokolowski.

She notes that part of the reason for this could be that women are socialized to express their emotions “outwardly,” while men are pressured to not show feelings like fear and sadness at all.

“It feels hard to know for sure if women are experiencing more stress than men,” said Sokolowski. “Or are they just more comfortable talking about it.”

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