Differences by Gender in the Experience of Burnout Among Educators of Higher Education Institutions

Abstract Burnout of the educators has become extremely important topic in the scientific society for the past few years, especially, since the pandemic caused by Covid-19 occurred. Since the 1970s, when the burnout arose on the scientific agenda, educators were stated as one of the professions highly associated with burnout. However, in different studies, researchers argue about whether burnout is related to the gender of the educators. The goal of the research is to determine if gender of the educators from different universities in Europe has a link with such symptoms of burnout as exhaustion, depersonalisation and reduced accomplishment. The objectives of this study are to analyse recent scientific findings on burnout and its relation to gender, as well as analyse data from the authors’ survey to find out if symptoms of burnout are related to the gender of educators from Europe. Research methods include a literature review and survey of educators from different higher education institutions. For survey data analysis, the following indicators have been used: descriptive statistics, testing of statistical hypotheses with Mann-Whitney non-parametric test and t-test. The results of the study show that there is statistically significant difference in relation of the gender to the burnout symptoms within the educators of the higher education institutions in Europe, as male educators demonstrate a higher level of such burnout symptoms as exhaustion and reduced personal accomplishment, as well as male educators show higher willingness to change their professional field due to exhaustion.