Understanding the Burnout Experiences of Female PhD Students: A Qualitative Phenomenological Study

Abstract

Doctoral student burnout represents a critical global concern, yet the lived experiences of this phenomenon among women in the rapidly evolving Chinese higher education context remain inadequately understood. Employing Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), this study explored the psychological trajectory of burnout among six female PhD students. Interpreted through the lenses of Maslach’s three-dimensional model, the analysis reveals a dynamic, sequential progression of burnout organized into three superordinate themes: starting with exhaustion, moving to detachment, and culminating in reduced accomplishment. This progression underscores burnout not as a static state but as a dynamic process intensified by gendered socio-academic pressures. The study concludes with implications for developing more flexible, gender-sensitive support structures designed to support the well-being of female doctoral students.

Plain Language Summary

An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of the Burnout Experiences of Chinese Female Doctoral Candidates

This study explores how female PhD students in China experience burnout. We interviewed six students to understand their personal stories. Our findings show that burnout is not a sudden breakdown, but a process that unfolds in three stages: it starts with profound exhaustion, then leads to detachment from research and social life, and finally results in a loss of professional efficacy and personal purpose. This process is particularly intense for women, as it is worsened by extra pressures like family duties, a lack of emotional support in mentorship, and societal expectations about marriage and career timing. Based on these insights, we recommend that universities develop more flexible and supportive structures to better address female doctoral students’ needs and safeguard their well-being.

Introduction

The mental health of PhD candidates has raised increasing international alarm, as this population increasingly struggles with anxiety, depression, and burnout worldwide (Evans et al., 2018; Forrester, 2021; Keloharju et al., 2024; Levecque et al. 2017). Indeed, reports in Nature have explicitly characterized the current situation as a “mental health crisis” in academia (Schwaller, 2025). Empirical evidence underscores the severity of this issue. For instance, a 2019 Nature survey of 6,320 global PhD students revealed that 36% of respondents sought help for anxiety or depression reportedly caused by their academic pursuits (Woolston, 2019). Furthermore, a recent meta-analysis found that 24% and 17% of PhD students exhibit clinically significant symptoms of depression and anxiety, respectively (Satinsky et al., 2021). Beyond these clinical disorders, burnout has also emerged as a critical risk in doctoral education (Kusurkar et al., 2021; Nagy et al., 2019; Sorrel et al., 2020). Although this syndrome was traditionally linked to service professions (Freudenberger, 1974), it is now increasingly prevalent among PhD candidates who must juggle multiple roles as students, researchers, and teachers, while frequently facing heavy workload, role conflict, financial insecurity, uncertain career prospects, etc. (Mackie & Bates, 2019). The consequences of this syndrome can adversely affect their physical health (Rummell, 2015), work-life balance, and work productivity (Kusurkar et al., 2021). At the organizational level, such burnout is strongly correlated with lower work engagement (Tikkanen et al., 2021), higher turnover intentions, leading to a substantial loss for institutions and academia (Barthauer et al., 2020; McAlpine et al., 2018; Nagy et al., 2019).

However, the experience of doctoral burnout is not uniform; it is deeply influenced by demographic factors, specifically gender. Female doctoral students have been found to experience higher levels of stress and lower levels of psychological well-being compared to their male counterparts (Prieto Vila et al., 2024; Schmidt & Hansson, 2018). This gender disparity is often attributed to the “double burden” of research demands and domestic duties, which creates significant tension between their professional and personal lives (Brown & Watson, 2010; Carter et al., 2013). Despite this, existing literature has predominantly treated doctoral students as a homogeneous group or focused on Western samples. Consequently, the specific ways in which distinct cultural and social norms in Chinese settings interact with gender to shape the PhD experience remain underexplored. Furthermore, while existing quantitative and qualitative studies have provided valuable insights, the dominant scholarly focus remains largely factor-oriented, focusing mainly on identifying the antecedents and consequences of burnout. While necessary, these approaches often fail to capture how individuals actually experience, interpret, and internalize this multifaceted challenge. To bridge these gaps, the present study employs Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), which is explicitly designed to explore the personal meaning-making process and how individuals make sense of significant life experiences (Smith et al., 2021).

Guided by this approach, the study explores the following central research question: How do female doctoral students in China experience and make sense of burnout during their PhD journey? By centering their lived experiences and personal meaning-making, this study seeks to inform the development of more tailored and effective support structures within China’s doctoral education system.

Background and Theoretical Framework

Burnout

Burnout is generally defined as a psychological syndrome resulting from long-term stress in the workplace (Freudenberger, 1974). It consists of three primary dimensions: exhaustion, depersonalization (also known as cynicism), and reduced personal accomplishment (or inefficacy) (Maslach et al., 2001). Exhaustion describes the feelings of being emotionally overextended and depleted of one’s emotional resources. Depersonalization involves becoming emotionally distant from one’s work or others, often accompanied by cynicism or indifference. Finally, reduced personal accomplishment refers to a decline in one’s sense of competence and success in their professional role (Maslach, 2018; Maslach et al., 2001). These three dimensions are often thought to develop in a specific order. Exhaustion typically occurs first as a response to high workloads and excessive demands. This state of fatigue then leads to depersonalization, as the individual tries to create distance between themselves and their job or the people around them. If this situation continues, it eventually results in a sense of inadequacy and a feeling of failure in one’s work, which is recognized as reduced personal accomplishment (Maslach & Leiter, 2016). Collectively, these dimensions form the basis of the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), which is widely used for measuring burnout risk across various professional settings (A. Wang et al., 2024).

As doctoral work is increasingly recognized as a form of professional labor, this framework has been widely applied to the academic context (Aquino et al., 2018; Urooj et al., 2025). Within doctoral education, burnout has emerged as a pervasive crisis that threatens both PhDs’ academic persistence and mental well-being (Schmidt & Hansson, 2018). Quantitative evidence indicates that doctoral researchers exhibit high rates of emotional exhaustion, which is identified as the most salient dimension of their distress (Sorrel et al., 2020). Notably, gender acts as a significant factor in this regard, with female doctoral students reporting higher levels of exhaustion compared to their male counterparts (Devine & Hunter, 2017). Beyond emotional exhaustion, research has also highlighted the prevalence of cynicism linked to negative institutional factors (McAlpine et al., 2022). Moving beyond these statistical trends, qualitative studies provide a deeper look into the multifaceted nature of these experiences. Recent studies suggest that the PhD burnout journey is not a simple state of disengagement, but rather a complex struggle involving fluctuating feelings of inefficacy, cynicism, and sometimes exhaustion (Vekkaila et al., 2013). Since this process is so dynamic and non-linear, it warrants a nuanced, person-centered exploration to understand how these shifting feelings are personally lived and interpreted.

The Chinese Context

While the mental health crisis is global, the drivers of burnout among Chinese doctoral students possess unique institutional characteristics that warrant specific attention. China has rapidly emerged as a global leader in doctoral education volume. According to the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China (2024), the total number of doctoral students reached 612,500 in 2023, ranking first globally. However, this massive enrollment expansion has not always been matched by a corresponding increase in supervisory resources or academic job opportunities. This pressure is further exacerbated by a highly competitive job market that requires graduates to demonstrate exceptional professional skills while conforming to strict age restrictions (Du & Wei, 2022). These imbalances have fostered an environment of intense, often destructive internal competition, commonly described as “involution” (neijuan; Horta & Li, 2023). Within this high-pressure ecosystem, the prevailing “publish or perish” culture serves as a core driver, formalizing institutional demands through notoriously high graduation benchmarks, typically tied to publications in journals indexed in SCI, SSCI, or the Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index (CSSCI) (Wu, 2025). This creates a high-stakes environment where academic survival depends on quantifiable output, often at the expense of mental health (X. Wang et al., 2019). Consequently, focusing on the mental status of Chinese doctoral students is not just an educational issue but a public health imperative, as they constitute the country’s main future force for scientific innovation.

Within this high-pressure context, female doctoral students face distinct challenges that differ significantly from their male counterparts. Beyond the “double burden” of research requirements and domestic responsibilities, their pressures are compounded by traditional cultural expectations, where the pursuit of a doctorate directly conflicts with societal pressures to marry and establish a family by a certain age (Liu & Lin, 2024). As noted by Li (2023), female PhD students are often marginalized in public discourse, being jokingly referred to as a “third gender” (neither male nor female) or labeled as “leftover women” (sheng nu) if they remain unmarried while pursuing their degrees. These societal labels force women into a continuous negotiation of their roles and identities as they navigate the contradictions between their career goals, personal relationships, and family expectations (Baker & Lattuca, 2010). Instead of focusing solely on their research, they must constantly manage these internal and external conflicts. This intersection of social and cultural pressure makes the experience of burnout among female doctoral students uniquely complex and worthy of exploration.

The Present Study

To address the identified gaps, particularly the lack of in-depth understanding regarding how female PhD students in China subjectively experience and interpret the burnout process, this study adopts a qualitative approach centered on personal meaning-making. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was selected as the core methodology as it focuses on a detailed examination of individual lived experiences and the meanings participants give to them (Smith et al., 2021). This allows the research to move beyond identifying the symptoms of burnout and external factors to reveal the internal, psychological logic of burnout.

To guide this exploration without restricting it, the study uses Maslach et al.’s (2001) multidimensional model of burnout as a theoretical starting point. In line with the inductive nature of IPA, the dimensions of exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced accomplishment were not used as a fixed coding framework during the initial analysis. Instead, the model served as a sensitizing tool in the later stages of the research to help translate participants’ rich narratives into a theoretical discourse that can converse with broader literature. Thus, the present investigation seeks to contribute a contextualized, process-oriented understanding of burnout. It aims to show not merely that Chinese female doctoral students experience burnout, but how the specific intersection of academic pressures, gendered expectations, and cultural norms combines into a lived reality that can deepen both the theoretical understanding of burnout as a dynamic process and the development of more tailored institutional support systems.

Method

This study employed Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA; Smith et al., 2021) to explore the nuanced burnout experiences of female PhD candidates. As Clarke (2009) noted, “the purpose of the IPA is concerned with understanding an individual’s personal account of a particular experience or phenomenon, rather than trying to find causal explanations for events or produce objective ‘facts’.” This idiographic focus allows for a rich exploration of how participants interpret their lived experiences within their specific socio-cultural context.

Participants

We employed a purposive sampling strategy to recruit a small, homogeneous sample, which is a core requirement for IPA research to allow for deep, idiographic analysis (Smith et al., 2021). While IPA research has historically employed sample sizes ranging from 1 to 15 (Bramley & Eatough, 2005), the emerging trend prioritizes small groups to facilitate detailed examinations of individual narratives, as larger samples may offer only a superficial understanding (Brocki & Wearden, 2006; Smith, 2024). Following the recommendation of Smith et al. (2021) for three to six participants, our sample purposefully remained small to enable an in-depth analysis that provides an authentic representation of the participants’ lived experiences. To ensure a homogeneous sample that shares similar gender-specific socio-cultural pressures within the Chinese context, this study focused exclusively on female candidates and excluded those who had already graduated to minimize retrospective bias.

Participants were recruited via RedNote (Xiaohongshu), a prominent Chinese social networking platform widely used by students for sharing academic and personal experiences. This platform was chosen because it allows access to individuals who are already engaged in reflecting on and articulating their personal struggles within their academic journeys. Following a recruitment announcement, a dozen volunteers responded. After screening, six were selected based on the following inclusion criteria: (a) currently enrolled in a PhD program in mainland China; (b) self-identifying as experiencing persistent academic burnout; and (c) having no history of clinical mental health disorders prior to PhD admission. Regarding the self-identification approach, IPA prioritizes the participant’s subjective sense-making of their condition (Eatough & Smith, 2017). While this introduces self-selection, it strengthens the study by focusing on people who are “experiential expert” of their own lives. These participants are fully engaged with their feelings of burnout, allowing them to provide the meaningful and reflective stories needed for IPA analysis.

The final sample consisted of six women aged 24 to 30 (M_age = 26, SD = 4.27), each at a different stage of her doctoral studies. All participants were full-time PhD candidates enrolled at universities in mainland China. Five were pursuing degrees in STEM disciplines, and one was in the Humanities. In terms of personal circumstances, four were in a stable partnership or married; among them, one was navigating motherhood alongside her studies. Detailed demographic profiles are presented in Table 1.

Table 1.

Profiles of the Six Participants.

Participant	Age	Grade (program length)	Major	Marital status & parenthood
Long	26	Third (PL: 3 years)	Ecology	Single
Di	26	First (PL: 3 years)	Ophthalmology	Married
Ya	25	Second (PL: 5 years)	Geographic Information Systems	Unmarried
Chou	24	Fourth (PL: 5 years)	Materials Science and Engineering	Single
Ru	27	Fourth (PL: 3 years)	Ocean Engineering	Married
Lu	30	Second (PL: 3 years)	Education	Married with one child

Data Collection

The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the authors’ affiliated university. To limit the risk of harm to participants, all individuals were assigned pseudonyms, and identifying institutional information was removed for full de-identification. Regarding the informed consent process, the researcher provided a comprehensive explanation of the study’s purpose, duration, and the voluntary nature of participation. Participant comprehension was ensured by allowing sufficient time for questions before obtaining voluntary, audio-recorded verbal consent. Participants were explicitly informed of their right to withdraw at any time without negative consequences, with psychological risks determined to be minimal compared to the potential insights gained for supporting female scholars.

To ensure data quality and minimize potential bias, the interview guide was refined through author discussions to prioritize open-ended questions. Additionally, the first author underwent pre-interview training from the corresponding author to maintain a consistent and neutral probing technique. Data collection occurred over a week via phone calls, with each session lasting approximately 1 hr. Anonymity and confidentiality were strictly maintained throughout the entire process.

The interviews followed a flexible guide that prioritized free narratives, beginning with the open-ended question “Tell me about your experience of feeling burnout as a female PhD candidate.” During these accounts, the interviewer provided prompts related to predefined topics such as the events, feelings, and meanings associated with burnout. Responses were further explored through specific probes, including “How did you feel at the time (physically, emotionally, or mentally)?” or “What do you think about that (participant’s own phrase)?” to elicit additional details. All interviews were transcribed verbatim. To ensure interpretive accuracy, transcripts were returned to participants for member-checking and any necessary modifications to their narratives.

Reflexivity and Positionality

As IPA emphasizes the co-construction of meaning between researcher and participant, critical reflection on our positionality is essential. The research team consisted of a female doctoral candidate, who conducted all interviews and led the analysis, and a male professor with substantial experience in qualitative research. The first author’s “insider” status as a fellow female PhD student helped establish trust and a sense of shared understanding. However, we recognized that our shared preconceptions regarding academic pressure and gender barriers could influence interpretation. To manage the first author’s pre-understandings and ensure the analysis remained participant-centered, the research team engaged in reflexive debriefing meetings where both authors critically examined emerging interpretations. During these sessions, the corresponding author provided an “outsider” perspective that challenged potential biases, ensuring the final analysis remained firmly grounded in the participants’ unique narratives.

Data Analysis

The data analysis followed the standard procedures of IPA (Smith et al., 2021). The process began with the first author reading each transcript multiple times to become fully familiar with the data. During this stage, preliminary notes were made in the margins to record initial observations regarding the participants’ language and experiences. These notes were then developed into emergent themes for each individual case. Next, the first author clustered these emergent themes into superordinate and subordinate themes based on their shared psychological features. To ensure the rigor of the analysis and manage potential researcher bias, the research team engaged in a collaborative review process. The corresponding author, acting as a “critical friend,” independently reviewed the coded transcripts and the thematic structure. We then held several meetings to discuss and resolve any differences in our interpretations. The analysis finally identified three superordinate themes: (a) starting with exhaustion, (b) moving to detachment, and (c) culminating in reduced accomplishment. The example of the analysis process, showing how raw participant quotes were transformed into the final themes is provided in Table 2.

Table 2.

Illustrative Example of the IPA Analytic Process.

Superordinate theme	Subordinate theme	Illustrative quote	Initial notes
Theme 1: Starting with exhaustion	Time poverty	“I feel that time is not enough … I start working almost every day around eight o’clock and finish work after eleven … No weekends.” (Di)	Time as scarce resource; work-life boundary collapse; no break from routine
	Peer pressure	“We are close to thirty years old … Our parents will always get worried if we haven’t found a stable boyfriend … Boys normally face less age pressure.” (Ya)	Dual pressure: career + marriage; gendered expectation; perceived unfairness
	Somatic symptoms	“I’ve visited the hospital’s emergency room three times due to stomachache … I thought I got stomach issues, but the doctor said [it’s] stress.” (Ru)	Physical pain as a sign of mental stress; body reacting to stress before the mind notices it
Theme 2: Moving to detachment	Aversion to life	“I’m currently quite resistant to doing research … I’ll find a lot of other things to do, like reading books and practicing calligraphy.” (Long)	Active avoidance; substitution with “meaningful” leisure; strategic withdrawal from core tasks
	Loneliness	“My male mentor could not empathize with me … He … always feels that girls’ emotions are complex and hard to understand.” (Ya)	Emotional isolation with mentor; lack of empathetic support
	Cynicism	“The return rate for taking PhD is too low … I might have wasted four years’ time.” (Ya)	PhD as poor investment; loss of meaning; retrospective regret; value crisis
Theme 3: Culminating in reduced accomplishment	Toxic productivity	“I feel guilty whenever I take a rest … If I produce little that day, I will not dare to take a break.” (Long)	Rest conditional on output; guilt-driven work cycle; self-worth tied to productivity
	Self-denial and Fear	“I couldn’t see my worth … In fact, it is because I cannot see my own value, and I doubt the meaning of my existence.” (Ru)	Existential doubt; worthlessness; burnout extending to self-concept and life meaning

Results

Theme 1: Starting with Exhaustion

All participants reported that they had experienced exhaustion over a long period of time before they fell into burnout. In the beginning, participants had lofty goals and ambitions, but as time went on, the reality diverged from what they had anticipated, and exhaustion eventually set in and swelled. Participants described themselves experiencing mental collapses every day, without ever asking for help: “I have been in a state of high pressure for a long time, that is where emotions accumulated … I don’t want to get up, I don’t want to turn on my laptop” (Lu). This theme unveils participants’ exhausted feelings in relation to time poverty, publishing challenge, peer competition, and somatic symptoms.

Time Poverty

All participants conveyed that the major source of their exhaustion was having too much to do with insufficient time to accomplish overwhelming demands. As Di described, “I feel that time is not enough, there are so many tasks … I start working almost every day around eight o’clock and finish work after eleven … No weekends. Even so, I still haven’t produced a lot of works.” The pressure stemmed from a compressed doctoral timeline; within just 3 to 4 years, they must meet graduation requirements and publish competitively to secure future employment. For some participants, the transition to doctoral-level research itself created time anxiety. Ru explained: “My research involves a lot of data collection, calculation, modeling, but I hadn’t learned how to process data … My work progressed slowly because I had to pause from time to time to learn by myself. It makes me anxious.” This experience of having to invest substantial time in skill-building, rather than in producing outputs, was common. It fed into the widespread perception that the first-year passed by very quickly, yet no matter how many hours they invested, a persistent sense of “falling behind” prevailed due to the mismatch between time spent and results achieved.

This temporal crisis was further compounded by gendered roles and physical expectations, creating a distinct form of exhaustion for female PhDs. This was not merely about workload volume, but of navigating competing identities. For instance, participants in physically demanding fields like ecology internalized a sense of bodily disadvantage, with one noting, “Compared with men, we girls are not as strong and durable physically … which makes us experience more burnout” (Long). More critically, the invisible labor of domestic and caregiving duties imposed a second shift. A married participant described returning to studies shortly after childbirth, her day fragmented into relentless cycles: “I spent the daytime at work and took care of the baby at night … I was like a robot with no entertainment or social contact” (Lu). For these women, time was not just scarce; it was the site of a silent, exhausting conflict between the identity of a dedicated researcher and socially prescribed roles.

Publishing Challenge

Participants’ time poverty dilemma was consciously or unconsciously associated with another big stressor: the publishing challenge. This “publish or perish” dynamic was deeply internalized, creating a conflict between rigid institutional demands and their personal scholarly ambitions, which all respondents cited as a major source of exhaustion. Lu’s question highlighted the institutional root of this strain: “The minimum graduation requirement in our school is to publish two journal articles indexed in SSCI, CSSCI (Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index) besides a doctoral dissertation … How can I not be anxious?” This external pressure collided with their internal drive to produce original, meaningful work. Participants began with high aspirations; as Ya recalled: “I was ambitious, hoping to make contributions to my field … But after experiencing countless setbacks in my experiments, all I want now is to graduate as soon as possible! All I want is my degree!” Yet, this drive was steadily eroded by the inherent uncertainty and frequent setbacks of research: “I had spent half a year on a project before I found it unworkable, so I had to … start all over again. But it is hard to get back the drive I had before” (Chou). The repeated cycle of effort and disappointment led to a deep questioning of their competence. Chou expressed, “My first three years were a waste of time, for I haven’t published any journal article … Every time I thought about it, I felt like a loser.”

Further intensifying this pressure were the rigid, self-imposed schedules participants created to survive the system. Di detailed a highly structured plan to graduate on time and enhance her CV: “I want to graduate on time … so the best timeline is to complete courses in the first year, [and] start on my thesis in the second year … [while applying] for the joint training program … to increase my job-seeking advantages.” However, this self-imposed discipline can create a trap: any setback, like a delayed graduation, was perceived not as a practical delay but as a profound personal failure. Ya articulated this fear explicitly: “I’ve always been concerned I won’t be able to graduate (on time) … If that happens, I will feel bad about disappointing both my parents and myself.” Thus, the publishing challenge formed a destructive cycle where institutional requirements, scientific uncertainty, and self-generated pressure combined to consume their energy and corrode their self-belief.

Peer Pressure

Peer pressure was another significant challenge for all respondents. Participants mentioned that they were used to comparing themselves to peers consciously or unconsciously: “I am more and more inclined to compare myself with my peers: Am I sleeping too much, playing too much while others are working hard under the table …?” (Di). Any sign of peer progress related to PhD studies can trigger distress. As Long admitted, “I got especially stressed out whenever I heard my peers attend conferences, finish experiments or publish papers … I know it’s unhealthy, but I can’t help it.” This comparison eroded their self-confidence, leading some to doubt their abilities even across different fields: “Once I saw someone achieve something, I would assume he/she is better than me even if we are in completely different fields and institutions” (Ya). For others, the pressure turned into a deep-seated feeling of not belonging in their immediate academic circle: “I now feel … not suitable for doing research. The gap between me and my peers is so huge … I become the most silent person in the research group because I don’t feel like I can fit into them” (Chou). At its worst, just being around their peers became intolerable, leading them to withdraw completely: “In order to do my research at my own pace, I now choose to stay away from my group-mates to avoid comparison and attention” (Lu).

Notably, for these female doctoral students, peer pressure extended far beyond the laboratory or library, permeating their social lives and life course. The comparison was not confined to academic metrics; it included a socially mandated life schedule: “I am going to complete my PhD this year, but I haven’t decided where to work or when to get married… I sense huge gap whenever I see my friends get married, land jobs, or start families” (Long). The detachment between their lived experiences and those of their peers made some, like Chou, question their choices: “Watching my peers make a living and buy houses or cars, while I am still worrying about my daily expenses … I sometimes question myself: ‘What am I doing here?’” A major part of this pressure was the “social clock.” As one participant explained, the anxiety was compounded by the knowledge that “We are close to thirty years old when we graduate … Our parents will always get worried if we haven’t found a stable boyfriend, been engaged, or had a baby by then … Boys normally face less age pressure” (Ya).

Somatic Symptoms

With few effective ways to cope with their mounting frustration and stress, participants’ distress began to manifest in physical ways. Long noticed bodily changes she linked to her emotional state: “I feel like I can easily get irritated whenever I stay in office. My heartbeat didn’t feel right for a while … the doctor said [it] had no serious issues … Maybe it has something to do with my bad feelings.” Reported symptoms were not always severe, but they sometimes lingered: “I have been in a state of low energy … I don’t feel refreshed and energetic no matter how long I rest … My headaches whenever I sit in front of the computer … It’s really hard for me to concentrate” (Lu). Sleep problems were universal, with Chou reporting, “I experience sleeplessness every day. Even if I am exhausted from the day, it is difficult for me to fall asleep in bed.”

Notably, participants tended to view these physical problems as bodily issues, not as signs of psychological stress. As Ru reported, “I’ve visited the hospital’s emergency room three times due to stomachache … I thought I got stomach issues, but the doctor said my problem has a lot to do with my long-term staying up late and stress … well, it makes sense.” This pattern showed a wider problem: they had difficulty in recognizing their own psychological distress. Instead of recognizing they needed care for their mental state, they blamed themselves for not being good enough. As Chou explained, “I knew there was something wrong with me, but I didn’t think it was serious enough to need to see a psychologist to talk about it … I always blame myself for not doing things well, not for being unwell.”

Theme 2: Moving to Detachment

As participants described their experiences, a clear turning point emerged in their stories. When the persistent exhaustion became intolerable, participants naturally tried to pull away from their research, their friends, and even their personal aspirations. This detachment, which started as a way to survive, eventually turned into deep feelings of aversion and cynicism.

Aversion to Life

As a way to cope with the intolerable pressure, participants noted a tendency to develop an aversion toward responsibilities and people that had once been highly important to them. Long expressed a direct resistance to her research work: “I’m currently quite resistant to doing research … I’ll find a lot of other things to do, like reading books and practicing calligraphy … my project did not go smoothly, I was scolded by tutor …, which made me even less motivated.” The participant with a child illustrated how she prioritized any short or medium-term family task over research: “I always consciously choose to clean the house, go shopping, do this and that with my kid in the first place … I didn’t leave much time for the study and research that should have been my major priority” (Lu). Research was described as something burdensome instead of a pursuit of reward. As Ru stated bluntly, “I simply don’t want to revise my graduation thesis. Every day I sat in front of my laptop, my mind was elsewhere.” This created a painful internal conflict, as Chou described: “I’m really torn! I now feel numb and uninterested in anything related to study … At the same time, I feel guilty and dying to change the situation.”

As academic work became a burden in life, their social world also contracted. They started to pull away from friends and social activities, a withdrawal Di described as, “I just want to be by myself and don’t want to see anyone … Now, I talk to my friends a lot less frequently.” This isolation was often driven by a fear of simple social inquiries, which they interpreted as veiled judgments on their productivity. Long admitted, “I get a lot bit paranoid and irritated whenever others come to care about me … for instance, I will overthink if a friend asks, ‘Are you busy recently?’” This anxiety created a social trap where any response felt like a failure. As she further explained, “I worry if I say I’m not busy, he/she’ll assume I’m sitting around doing nothing, and if I say I’m busy, he/she’ll think I’ve been working so hard while getting so little done. I would have this dark thought.” This feeling was common. Ru also shared, “I am most afraid of people asking how I am doing. I want to wrap myself up so no one can notice how messy I am.” With time, participants gradually lost interest in socializing and preferred to stay alone for they didn’t believe others could truly understand them. “No one can understand your situation, even your group-mates or your PhD friends, because everyone’s situation is different … All you can rely on is yourself, that’s all.” (Ya). Even when they wanted to reach out, exhaustion and an inability to articulate their emotions left them silent. Lu described this trapped feeling: “I want to talk, but I don’t know where to start. I don’t know who to talk to because I don’t think anyone can help me solve my problem.” Even the presence of those closest to her provided little relief from this isolation. As she explained, “Even my parents and my husband saw my vulnerability from the beginning, they couldn’t really help me … I feel so tired but I have to keep going.”

Loneliness

As they pulled away from social life, a deep sense of loneliness set in. Participants reported feeling not just alone, but deeply isolated. For some, like Ru, it was a physical and social isolation: “I am a loner at school … stay at dormitory for three or four days to write … Being silent from morning till night, I often worried I would stop being able to talk … Usually, my sadness comes at this time.” For others, the loneliness was more intellectual and spiritual: “This loneliness does not mean I have no one to talk to, and no one understands me. On the contrary, I have many friends and we share similar values … It is more like a kind of spiritual loneliness” (Long). This isolation manifested most acutely in the independent research process: “It comes when you think of a new idea but find no one to communicate with … when you can’t find a suitable research method for your topic, [or] can’t prove a new point and don’t know where to start” (Long). Furthermore, this intellectual isolation was perceived rooted in an absence of guidance: “My supervisor and I have different research directions. My seniors also have their own … Who can give me real help? … If I make a mistake, I may keep making it until I hit the wall and start over again” (Long).

These experiences led participants to believe their feelings were unseen or didn’t matter to others: “Your tutor will only ask you the significance of your topic. Your seniors will advise you to become an ‘academic artist’… and your parents will ask you when you can graduate … Whatever you are experiencing is not important” (Lu). For some, like Ya, this disconnect was explicitly gendered. She described how the emotional gap with her male supervisor intensified her loneliness: “My male mentor could not empathize with me … making it more difficult for me to speak with him than it is with female mentors. He in turn always feels that girls’ emotions are complex and hard to understand.” The person who was supposed to be her main guide in academia instead became someone she couldn’t open up to, isolating her in silence with her struggles.

Cynicism

Participants experiences of work aversion and social withdrawal were accompanied and often fueled by a sense of cynicism. Participants centrally experienced this as a questioning of the meaning and value of their PhD and the years spent pursuing it: “I am terribly exhausted … I don’t feel like getting any reward every day … the most stressful thing about studying for a PhD is that there is no timely positive feedback … no sign that ‘hard work always pays off’” (Long). With time, this doubt extended to the meaning and value of their work to others. One participant in experimental fields expressed: “I feel my experiments don’t make sense. To be honest, the sample size is too small, with little practical significance … I feel like I am doing meaningless experiments and making meaningless articles … I really don’t see the point” (Chou). This was also noted by the participant from the Humanities: “Liberal arts majors like education are all about writing papers. Whoever can publish the most papers will be the best … I think it’s quite boring” (Lu).

Their cynicism became most intense when they thought about future jobs. All participants similarly expressed worries that their PhD might not be worth the effort: “The return rate for taking PhD is too low … it is hard to find a good job given ‘degree inflation’ now … if I find work as faculty, the pay won’t be high … I might have wasted four years’ time” (Ya). For Chou, this pessimism was explicitly gendered: “For our major, I don’t think women should pursue doctoral degrees for we couldn’t find well-paid employment like men.” This concern was rooted in the harsh realities of her field: “most graduates will find employment in manufacturing plants or metal smelting plants … For our girls, it is difficult because jobs in factories are demanding, and employers always assume we girls are not strong enough to hold a position.” So, their cynicism was not merely academic; it was the bitter realization that they had trained for a system they perceived as offering diminished rewards and biased against women. This belief that the competition was fundamentally unfair made their burnout feel even heavier and inescapable.

Theme 3: Culminating in Reduced Accomplishment

Toward the end of their stories, the tone of what participants said changed noticeably. The earlier feelings of exhaustion and confusion turned into deep doubt and a sense of disconnection. They began to critically question themselves and the value of their doctoral work. We name this final theme culminating in reduced accomplishment, as it captures the struggle to work effectively and their deep self-doubt that characterized this stage of their experience.

Toxic Productivity

The above-described state of prolonged exhaustion and emotional distance inevitably impacts participants’ management of their daily lives. All participants indicated experiencing low efficiency and low achievement after long-term exhaustion. One respondent described her experience as: “When I try to go to sleep at night, there are a lot of things running in my head, my experiment, my deadlines, my future… It took me till two or three in the morning to finally fall asleep” (Ru). This exhaustion made it difficult for her to work the next day: “There is no doubt my work efficiency went down during the daytime … I fell into a vicious circle. The less work I do during the day, the more worried at night and sluggish the next day.” At this point, chronic fatigue drains their energy, making it even harder to work effectively. Apart from the unbalanced life-study schedule, their struggle to meet their own expectations wore down their motivation, resulting in more impatience and frustration: “I spend every day in the lab working, but I produced little … It feels like I was torn apart. I am dying to change the situation … but I feel like I’m drowning and don’t know what to do” (Chou). Without positive progress or reward over a long period, many felt stuck in a cycle of helplessness. With time, this scenario becomes even worse, with one participant mentioning the word “guilty”: “I feel guilty whenever I take a rest or go out when I’m not that productive at work … If I produce little that day, I will not dare to take a break” (Long). At this stage, enjoyment of life and relaxation are perceived as lowering one’s standards and wasting time, resulting in a strong sense of guilt and even lower productivity, motivation, and overall efficiency.

Self-Denial and Fear

The widening gap between their aspirations and their reality plunged participants into self-doubt and confusion. Without a clear path forward and discouraged by slow progress, their frustration transformed into a fundamental questioning of their capability: “The research direction I chose at the beginning was not very suitable … so I didn’t produce any work for a while. Then I started to feel very stressed out and went into a state of self-doubt, anxiety, and self-denial” (Ya). This loss of confidence even deepened into a denial of their right to belong in academia: “I’m in the fourth year … but the number of my papers published has not yet reached the graduation threshold … I sometimes doubt my ability … I felt I was not suitable for taking PhD because I am not smart enough” (Chou). More than just doubting their abilities, this became a crisis of identity on a more fundamental level. As Ru put it: “I couldn’t see my worth. When I can’t make progress, I deny myself … In fact, it is because I cannot see my own value, and I doubt the meaning of my existence.”

Their distress was magnified by a profound fear of disappointing those invested in their success. Long articulated this as an overwhelming burden: “My biggest fear is to let down my family, let down my mentor, let down my friends, not knowing what to do … it’s too much for me.” For the female PhDs, this fear of failure was intensified by a gendered temporal bind: “I’m afraid of postponing my program completion time because it will be hard for me to get employment if I pass the age of 35 … I must rush … not just for myself, but for the expectations and my future” (Lu). Lu’s fear was more than just a worry about graduating late. It was about hitting a wall in a job market that can be less accommodating of older women. For them, time was not merely a deadline; it was a countdown to gendered professional and personal crises.

Discussion and Implication

The present study sought to deepen the understanding of burnout among Chinese female PhD students by centering their lived experiences. Interpreted through the lens of Maslach’s three-dimensional model (Maslach et al., 2001), our analysis organized participants’ narratives into three superordinate themes: starting with exhaustion, moving to detachment, and culminating in reduced accomplishment. This structure not only revealed a clear, sequential development consistent with established burnout theory but also helped unpack the underlying dynamics of this progression. By validating this sequence, our findings affirmed the foundational view that burnout constitutes a dynamic and unfolding psychological process rather than a static state (Golembiewski et al., 1986; Maslach, 1982; Shirom, 2003). Specifically, for female doctoral candidates in this research, this process represents a progressive erosion of the self that originates in emotional exhaustion, evolves into a defensive strategy of psychological and social withdrawal, and finally results in a loss of professional efficacy and self-worth. This thematic progression also facilitates an examination of how gendered and institutional pressures intersect to intensify and exacerbate this downward trajectory.

Our findings first showed a notable change within the participants’ doctoral journey: while they entered their programs with high goals and ambition, they quickly fell into a state of painful exhaustion. This initial shift aligns with Maslach’s concept of emotional exhaustion, which is characterized by a depletion of energy and a sense of being overextended (Maslach et al., 2001). This transition from feeling positive to feeling overwhelmed validates previous research showing that doctoral studies can often lead to severe emotional depletion (Pyhältö et al., 2012; Stubb et al., 2011). These experiences echo the global landscape of academic strain, where workload, publication pressure, and peer pressure are identified as the primary stressors (Kusurkar et al., 2022; Zeeman et al., 2025). Our analysis further contextualizes these findings by identifying specific gendered dimensions that intensify these stressors. For example, the universal challenge of work-life balance was shaped by the invisible labor of household and caregiving duties. This imposed an exhausting extra workload that consumed their time and energy, directly fueling their emotional exhaustion. Such findings echo the “double burden” experienced by women in academia, where gendered care work significantly elevates mental health risks (Docka-Filipek & Stone, 2021). Furthermore, we found that this exhaustion was compounded by the psychological weight of a gendered “social clock,” characterized by the anxiety that delayed graduation could jeopardize future job and marriage prospects. This created a pervasive background anxiety that transformed academic struggles into a source of personal anxiety, thereby intensifying their emotional exhaustion.

As the exhaustion described above became intolerable, our participants moved into a stage of detachment. This shift aligns with Maslach’s concept of depersonalization, where individuals create an emotional distance from their work as a response to chronic stressors (Maslach & Leiter, 2016). In our study, this was manifested as a deliberate aversion to research and a withdrawal from social circles. While prior literature suggests that social support is a key buffer against burnout (Peltonen et al., 2017; Vekkaila et al., 2018), our findings revealed a more complex reality where participants often perceived social interaction as a source of “veiled judgment” rather than support. This social paranoia and subsequent isolation were fueled by a belief that peers or mentors could not truly empathize with their specific struggles. Notably, this sense of intellectual loneliness was acute in the context of mentorship, where a significant gendered gap emerged. The perceived lack of empathy from male supervisors, who were often seen as adhering to “emotionless” academic norms, mirrors research showing that gender stereotypes can lead to lower levels of engagement and supportive feedback from instructors toward female students (Carlana, 2019). This lack of real connection and positive feedback further pushed these women toward cynicism and isolation. This detachment was not merely a passive symptom but a strategic effort to protect their remaining resources, a mechanism that resonates with the resource protection tenets of Conservation of Resources (COR) theory (Hobfoll, 2001). COR theory posits that people try to gain and protect resources like emotional energy, time, and psychological resilience to preserve functional performance and overall well-being (Hobfoll, 1989, 2001). In this study, the preceding exhaustion stage represented a significant drain on these resources; consequently, the observed avoidance of work and social contact serves as a functional mechanism to prevent further depletion. For female PhD students, this strategic withdrawal is especially urgent because this resource loss is often exacerbated by the conflict between work and family life, which COR theory identifies as a double drain on resources (Westman et al., 2004).

The final stage of this trajectory, which aligns with Maslach’s concept of reduced personal accomplishment, represents the erosion of the participants’ professional and personal self-worth. A salient feature of this stage was the paradox of “toxic productivity,” where participants remained trapped in a cycle of long hours but minimal output. This persistent gap between intense effort and lack of achievement often leads to self-criticism. Such criticism is particularly intense when doctoral candidates perceive a misalignment between their high aspirations and their actual academic progress, leading them to evaluate themselves much more harshly (Robertson, 2017). These experiences echo the broader impostor phenomenon, which is frequently documented among doctoral populations struggling with feelings of inadequacy (Nori & Vanttaja, 2023; Van de Velde et al., 2019). However, our analysis suggests that for female PhD candidates in China, this sense of failure is not just an internal psychological state but a reflection of an unfair academic race. As Leonard (2001) noted, women are often placed at a disadvantage within postgraduate education because the system is structured around masculine norms. For instance, research has shown that male doctoral recipients having a significantly greater chance of securing permanent contracts compared to their female counterparts (Van de Schoot et al., 2012). Consequently, the participants’ cynicism toward the value of a PhD was often rooted in the harsh reality of this biased job market. When participants expressed fears that their fields were fundamentally unwelcoming to women or that their years of intensive training had been wasted, they were articulating a form of structural disillusionment. This profound disillusionment culminates in a crisis of identity: when the rigid, output-driven academic demands collide with the lack of structural support for women, the result is a breakdown of their individual, relational, and collective selves (Sedikides & Brewer, 2015). Thus, reduced accomplishment is the inevitable end-state for those forced to compete in a system that measures success through masculine-coded metrics while ignoring the gendered costs of that success.

This study contributes to burnout literature by providing a phenomenological account that connects the subjective, psychological dimensions of burnout with an examination of gendered structures in academia, thereby identifying a gendered mechanism that specifies how pressures like the invisible care burden, the gendered mentorship gap, and the biased academic job market actively intensify each stage of the burnout process for women. Alleviating it, therefore, requires coordinated strategies that target institutional policy, mentorship practice, and peer support. At the institutional level, universities should move toward more flexible doctoral pathways that move away from a strict “one-size-fits-all” timeline. This involves creating formal policies for parental, family, or health-related leave where a student’s funding and enrollment status are fully protected. Simultaneously, academic evaluations should shift from quantitative publication metrics toward developmental portfolio assessments that prioritize process, skill acquisition, and longitudinal project growth. To improve mentorship, universities should encourage co-mentorship models, such as pairing a male and a female supervisor, or establish doctoral advisory committees. This provides female students with diverse perspectives and a safer environment to seek both professional guidance and personal support (Ma et al., 2025). Equally important is a deeper transformation in mentorship culture. Supervisors should be trained in psychosocial mentoring to create a trusting space where students feel comfortable discussing their struggles. Finally, institutions should actively support structured peer communities. This includes funding formal peer-mentoring networks and facilitating themed support groups tailored to the experiences of female doctoral students, thereby enabling students to move from isolation to connection, rebuild a sense of shared identity, and transform the doctoral experience from a site of exhaustion into one of shared empowerment.

Limitations and Future Directions

Several limitations of this research should be noted alongside recommendations for future studies. First, while the small sample size is appropriate for the interpretative phenomenological analysis employed, the predominance of STEM participants limits the generalizability and transferability of findings to other disciplines. Second, the use of telephone interviews may have omitted non-verbal cues, such as facial expressions and body language, which could have enriched the interpretation of emotional states. Third, our inquiry was situated within a specific high-pressure, research-intensive academic environment in China; thus, the findings are conceptually bounded by this context. We did not examine how the experience might differ across various university types, disciplines, or marital statuses, which warrant systematic comparison in future work. Fourth, by prioritizing the depth of subjective experience, this study did not employ data triangulation, such as supervisor evaluations or institutional records. Building on these limitations, we suggest several directions for future research. Subsequent studies could employ comparative designs across institution types and disciplines, investigate the burnout experience of male doctoral students to enable a fuller gendered analysis, track the burnout process longitudinally, and develop interventions based on the gendered structural factors identified here, such as reformed mentorship models and flexible doctoral pathways.