Deloitte has recently released the fourth edition of their Women @ Work: A Global Impact report, which analyzes the workplace and societal factors facing working women across the world. The report consists of the views of over 5,000 women from organizations in 10 different countries regarding their mental health, working conditions, employers, work-life balance, and home life.
Among the report’s most key findings, poor mental health was found to be persistent among working women, with half of respondents agreeing their stress levels are higher than they were a year ago and that they are at least somewhat concerned with their mental health. Furthermore, two thirds of women reported not feeling comfortable speaking about mental health with their employers for fear of retaliation.
Roughly one quarter of respondents reported experiencing challenges related to menstruation, menopause, or fertility. Over 40 percent of these women stated they work through their pain and do not take time off work because of it. Many women in this sample felt uncomfortable discussing these challenges with their employers, with some reporting their careers have been negatively affected for discussing such topics.
High levels of mental health concerns were particularly found among women who work more than their contracted hours, as well as those who bear the most responsibility for childcare or care of another adult. Half of women who lived with a partner reported carrying most of the childcare responsibilities, even for those women who were their household’s primary earner. Women who reported the largest shares of household responsibility were found to be significantly more likely to have mental health concerns.
The participants were frequently likely to report work-life balance as the most important factor in staying with or leaving a job. However, 95 percent of respondents believe that requesting or taking advantage of flexible working opportunities would hinder their chance at a promotion. For those women that do take advantage of flexible options, such as hybrid work, about one third believe they are sometimes excluded from meetings and work opportunities.
While there have been some improvements in women’s inclusivity and safety at work since Deloitte’s 2023 report, almost half of respondents are concerned about their safety either at work, commuting to work, or traveling for work. Nearly 10 percent of women reported experiencing sexual assault by a colleague and 43 percent of women reported experiencing some form of harassment or microaggressions while at work. However, over one third of women who experienced sexual assault and 40 percent of women who experienced microaggressions at work chose not to report it out of fear of retaliation or that they would not be taken seriously.
The Deloitte report offers several recommendations on how to improve women’s experiences at work. They suggest organizations take action to understand what makes it difficult for women to speak up at work and the present-day drivers that lead to their poor mental health. This could include creating policies that reflect the importance of women’s health and safety, as well as those that create an open and inclusive environment without fear of penalty.