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Amongst other struggles, women are working through pain and fewer than half feel supported by their employer to balance their work responsibilities with commitments outside work.
As stress levels rise and poor mental health persist, fewer women report feeling supported by their employers to balance work responsibilities with their commitments outside of work — a trend that is leading some women to switch employers, as discovered in Deloitte’s Women @ Work: A Global Outlook.
In its fourth year, the survey of 5,000 women in workplaces across 10 countries sheds some light on the critical workplace and societal factors impacting women’s careers.
Despite women working in a hybrid model reporting better experiences this year than last, many have recently been asked to return to the office and are reporting adverse effects on their mental health and productivity.
Emma Codd, Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer, Deloitte Global, commented: “Despite a small number of improvements since last year, our survey tells us that women are facing mounting pressures in the workplace, their personal lives, and in their communities.
“Globally, women feel their rights are backsliding, they are experiencing increased stress and taking on the majority of household tasks at home. Alongside this they are experiencing non-inclusive behaviours at work, are concerned for their safety and feel unable to disclose when they are experiencing women’s health challenges. This is a situation that must change—and employers must enable this.”
Further, as Yvaine Gan, Deloitte Southeast Asia SheXO Programme Leader, points out, workplace flexibility remains one of the top factors women consider when making career decisions. In order to hire and retain the best available talent, employers should support and empower their employees to balance their work and personal lives by providing flexibility in working hours and workloads.
Stress and long working hours increasingly impacting women’s mental health
Mental health is a top-three concern for women globally (48%), only falling behind their financial security (51%) and rights (50%). Currently, half of the respondents say their stress levels are higher than they were a year ago, while a similar number say they’re concerned or very concerned about their mental health.
While the survey explores several potential factors behind this trend of declining mental health levels, among them is an inability to disconnect from work — while half of women who typically just work their contracted hours describe their mental health as good, this declines to 23% for those who regularly work extra hours. Only 37% say they feel able to switch off from their work.
Exacerbating such an issue, more than half of the women surveyed say they aren’t receiving adequate mental health support from employers, and two-thirds of women don’t feel comfortable talking about their mental health in the workplace. Despite the concerning findings, the results do show progress from last year’s findings when even more women said they did not receive adequate mental health support from their employer and did not feel comfortable speaking about mental health in the workplace.
Household responsibilities are affecting women's careers
According to the survey, women are feeling the weight of misbalanced caregiving and domestic responsibilities. Notably, 50% of those who live with a partner and have children say they take the most responsibility for childcare — an increase from 46% in 2023. Only 12% say this falls to their partner.
At the same time, 57% of those who live with a partner and are involved in care of another adult say they take the greatest responsibility for this — up from 44% in 2023, while only 5% say this responsibility falls to their partner.
To add on, more than two in five women bear the most responsibility for cleaning and other domestic tasks, similar to 2023.
The impact is evident: women who take on the greatest share of household responsibilities are far less likely to say they have good mental health than those who do not. Nearly half say they have taken time off work for mental health reasons in the past year, compared with just under a quarter of women who don’t have the greatest responsibilities for these tasks.
In terms of professional careers, only 27% of women who bear the greatest responsibility at home say they can disconnect from their personal life and focus on their careers.
Feeling unsafe in the workplace and non-inclusive behaviours
Roughly half of the women indicated they were worried about their safety when they are at work or traveling to or for work, which was not an unfounded concern — one in 10 of these women have been harassed while commuting or traveling for work, 16% deal with customers or clients that have harassed them or behaved in a way that has made them feel uncomfortable.
In the workplace itself, nearly one in 10 have been harassed by a colleague:
- Overall, 31% of respondents have experienced microaggressions,
- 4% have experienced sexual harassment, and
- 8% have experienced other types of harassment at work in the past 12 months.
Further, a quarter of women say that people in senior positions within their organisations have made inappropriate actions or comments toward them.
Diving deeper, women who identify as part of an underrepresented group are more likely to be worried about their personal safety at work or when traveling to or for it — a particularly pronounced concern for women with a visible disability (66%) and transgender women (64%).
Underrepresented groups are also more likely to experience non-inclusive behaviours. For instance, 40% of women belonging to an ethnic minority in their home country and 45% of women with a disability have experienced microaggressions at work, compared to 30% of women who are not from these groups. More than half of LGBT+ women have experienced microaggressions, compared to less than three in 10 women who are not LGBT+.
Women are working through pain
More than one-quarter of women experience health challenges related to menstruation, menopause, or fertility. Across these range of challenges, a common theme remains true: many are working through pain or discomfort.
Around 40% of women experiencing high levels of pain or discomfort from menopause work through their symptoms, nearly twice the percentage from the previous year. Interestingly, there's been an increase in the number of women (14%) who don't feel at ease discussing their menopause symptoms with their manager, compared to 10% in the prior year — perhaps because 16% of women say citing menopause as a reason for taking time off work has negatively affected their career, a sharp jump from 6% in 2023.
Nearly one in six (15%) of women experiencing challenges relating to menstruation, menopause or fertility feel that speaking up about this at work would affect their career progression. Notably, one in 10 believe doing so would make them vulnerable to redundancy.
Flexibility and work/life balance are key to retaining women
The report saw a notable improvement in women’s experiences with hybrid working over the past year — including when it comes to exclusion, predictability, and flexibility. That being said, about three in 10 women still experience exclusion from meetings, a lack of predictability in their working pattern, and a lack of flexibility.
More than 40% of women surveyed report that their employer has recently implemented a mandatory return to office, of which a quarter are required to be on-site full time. In response, some of these women report that they have made adjustments to their work and personal lives following the introduction of such a policy — and some report an impact to their mental health and their productivity levels: just over a third say they have asked to reduce their hours, 30% say they had to relocate, 26% say their mental health has been negatively impacted, and 20% say their productivity has decreased.
The impact of challenges with flexible working does not go unnoticed — the lack of flexible working hours was ranked among the top reasons women have changed jobs over the past year (15%), with the same number also citing poor work/life balance.
Despite the evident importance, fewer than half of women feel supported by their employer to balance their work responsibilities with commitments outside work. In fact, nearly all women surveyed (95%) believe that requesting or taking advantage of flexible work opportunities will negatively affect their chances of promotion and 93% don’t expect that their workload would be adjusted if they moved to a flexible working arrangement.
Gender equality leaders are excelling — but more are needed
Company culture seems to be standing in the way of women’s retention and career progression. This year the survey found that one-quarter of women do not want to progress into a senior leadership position in their organisation, with the top reason being that they’re put off by the company culture.
On the other hand, at organisations known as “Gender Equality Leaders", 92% of women feel more inclined to progress into a senior leadership position. Women in these companies also report higher levels of loyalty toward their employer and productivity, feel safer, are more comfortable talking about their mental health at work, and are more comfortable they can work flexibly without it damaging their career.
Lead image / 123rf.com
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