Thabisile Gumede
9 August 2026
Nomvula makes her mother’s tea before she wakes her son for school. By 6:30am she has checked her mother’s blood pressure medication, packed a lunchbox, answered two work emails from bed, and mentally rehearsed the difficult conversation she needs to have with her manager about taking Friday off – again – for her mother’s clinic appointment. She hasn’t had a full night’s sleep in eleven months. She is 41 years old, and by the numbers, she is not unusual. She is the norm.
Across South Africa, a generation of women has quietly become the connective tissue holding families together – raising children, caring for ageing parents, and holding down jobs, often all at once. It is unpaid, mostly invisible, and increasingly unsustainable. As the country marks Women’s Day on 9 August, mental health practitioners are asking South Africans to look past the language of strength and resilience that so often frames this day, and to reckon instead with what the “sandwich generation” is quietly costing women’s minds.
South Africa now has approximately 5.6 million people over the age of 60, and demand for elder care is rising fast – usually absorbed by women already raising children and working. Stats SA’s Time Use Survey shows women contribute close to three-quarters of the value of all household production in the country. Mothers with young children carry a disproportionate childcare load too: 87 minutes a day on average, versus just seven minutes for men in the same position. Add eldercare on top, and the arithmetic stops adding up.
SADAG, South Africa’s leading mental health body, has flagged the compounding burden on women managing home and career, describing many as struggling to cope with childcare and overall feelings of burnout. A recent SADAG workplace survey found 52% of employees reported a diagnosed mental health condition, with depression, clinical stress, anxiety and burnout the most common issues. Operations Director Cassey Chambers points to work stress and job insecurity as central drivers nationally.
For women specifically, the numbers are sharper: more than 40% of South African women report poor mental health, and postpartum depression is estimated to affect as many as one in three new mothers. A 2026 global survey of over 19,000 caregivers found 64% of working women in the sandwich generation are now at a breaking point, with women aged 40-54 at the highest burnout risk of any group. Peer-reviewed research confirms female caregivers report poorer mental health than male caregivers: 93% feel personally responsible for holding their family together, and 80% say they need a break but don’t know how.
South African practitioners increasingly frame this as structural, not individual – a social determinant of health rather than a personal shortcoming. A South African study of burnout among female doctors found it an overwhelming, harmful experience requiring systemic intervention – logic that extends to millions of women doing unpaid care with far less support.
For Nomvula, the reframe matters: burnout isn’t poor time management. It’s the predictable result of an economy that still treats care work as free and someone else’s problem to notice.
Practitioners point to consistent shifts: naming chronic overload as a mental health issue early; redistributing unpaid care within households; building workplace flexibility around eldercare, not just parental leave; and using free resources like SADAG’s helplines – still underused by women who assume their exhaustion doesn’t “count.”
This Women’s Day, the most honest tribute to South African women may not be another celebration of how much they can carry. It may be an honest accounting of how much they are carrying – and a real conversation about putting some of it down.
Struggling with burnout or caregiver stress? SADAG offers free, confidential support: 0800 567 567
