Burnout is an important problem for sports fields. Burnout is generally associated with higher rates of illness, increased use of drugs, lower career satisfaction, but also reduced quality of service, resulting in poor patient outcome. Thus, the purpose of this research was to investigation of the effect of gender and sport field type on burnout levels in Iranian athletes. Participants included 200 athletes that divided in 2 groups (individual and team athletes). There were 100 individual and 100 team athletes, and their ages ranged from 23-34 years-old. Each group was consisted the 50 male and 50 female. Individual sport fields were consisted the badminton, table tennis, Judo and Karate. Furthermore, team sport fields were consisted football, handball, basketball and volleyball teams. All participants filled in the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI). The MANOVA test Results showed that women athletes had higher scores than men athletes in burnout components (P<0.05). Furthermore, our results showed that the team athletes group obtained higher scores than individual athletes group in burnout components (P<0.05). Based on our obtained results, woman team athletes obtained higher scores in these components rather than men and women individual and men team athletes (P<0.05). These results are consistence with Maslach et al., (2001) the argued burnout occurs more frequently among women. These results are consistent with Smith gender role theory, which predicts that women should be more likely to express feelings of emotional and physical fatigue (e.g., emotional exhaustion) because they learn to display their emotions, whereas men should be more likely to shut off and withdraw under stress (i.e., depersonalization) because they learn to conceal their emotions.
