Music artist Chess Galea used to swallow her anger, terrified of being labelled "hysterical" or "difficult to work with." Now, at 34, she simply lets it rip: "If someone catcalls me in the street, I rage. I don't care." Galea is one of a growing number of UK women reporting feeling angrier than ever, citing everything from the "mental load" to workplace sexism to violence against women. "We don't realise how much we accept and how much we close our mouths," she says.

The numbers back her up. In 2024, one in five British women reported being angry during a lot of the previous day, up from one in 10 in 2020. For nearly two decades, more women than men worldwide have reported experiencing daily anger, and the gap keeps widening. So are women actually angrier, or just finally saying it out loud? Psychotherapist Jennifer Cox, author and co-host of the Women are Mad podcast, suggests it's a bit of both. She started researching anger after noticing a pattern among her female clients: migraines, stomach issues, musculoskeletal and immune problems. "Ultimately it was hard to ignore," she says. "They were trying to keep their kids on track, look after their mental health and somehow do their job [too]."

Cox traces the root to what she calls "this ridiculous 'good girl' stuff" - decades of indoctrination into being polite, kind, and thoughtful. "The big change from previous generations is that we are expected to do it all." And they do. According to the Office for National Statistics, women spend nearly an hour longer each day than men on unpaid work like chores and caring responsibilities - on top of the invisible "mental load" of keeping a household running.

Culture, at least, is catching up. Where angry women once appeared as unstable villains - Glenn Close's Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction, Sissy Spacek's Carrie in Stephen King's horror classic - female rage is now framed as understandable, even liberating. Lily Allen's 2025 album West End Girl graphically documented the end of her marriage to actor David Harbour, while Charli XCX, Olivia Rodrigo, and Chappell Roan have released songs full of violent imagery and literal screams. Even 2023's smash-hit Barbie showed the iconic doll frustrated with her supposedly picture-perfect world. Cox calls these depictions helpful and healthy.

Real life, however, still charges a penalty. A 2020 study found women expressing anger at work were seen as less deserving of status and influence - a standard their male counterparts somehow escaped. So can women express anger at work and still get ahead? Yes, says life coach Yann Dang, who specialises in coaching senior women in male-dominated fields. Women who people-please can climb to a certain level, she argues, but to reach the top you need to rock the boat. "Women are so good at learning the rules when we know what the rules are," she says. "But the rules in the corporate world are totally different." Dang recommends direct language like "That's a hard no for me," "I don't like that," and "I'm frustrated too" - and advises women to "build the muscle" of standing up for themselves, polished response or not.

Beyond everyday sexism, ongoing threats like stalking, harassment, and domestic abuse unite women in anger and defiance. Violence against women and girls accounts for nearly 20% of all recorded crime in England and Wales, yet it often goes unreported. For Galea, discussing her experience of misogyny in the music industry - and the sexual assault she survived - more openly with other women has crystallised her frustration. "I think we've been angry for a long time but now we can access others because of social media," she says.

Psychologist Dr Tara Brach agrees anger has its place. "The key thing is under anger there's something we care about," she says. "Anger is a messenger, it brings us energy to protect, confront injustices, set boundaries, to make a change. It becomes unhealthy when it possesses us, or when we act in ways that harm." To channel it effectively, Brach advocates mindfulness - specifically the "RAIN" strategy: recognise the emotion, allow yourself to experience it, investigate the cause, and nurture feelings of understanding. Which is a politer way of saying what women have suspected for centuries: the rage was never the problem.