What's Holding Back Working Women? Same Obstacles, More Anxiety

Forbes

14-05-2025

'Net worth', 'husband', and 'LinkedIn': a recent study found that these three terms were the most common Google searches regarding female CEOs. In fact, queries about a female CEO's spouse and family were 216% and 130% more common, respectively, than those same queries for a male CEO. In contrast, searches for a male CEO's salary and education were 169% and 61% more common, respectively, than those same searchers for a female CEO. The study, conducted by the Movchan Agency, thus concluded that individual searchers, on average, cared more about male CEO's professional traits (such as education and compensation) and about female CEO's personal characteristics (such as husbands and families).
But these gender biases don't apply only to female CEOs. From hiring to promoting to mentoring, working women have faced - and continue to face - headwinds that their male peers don't necessarily experience. While many of these challenges have existed for years, women recently have also internalized new levels of uncertainty which leads to additional mental distress and which only complicates their ability to push forward in their workplaces.
Parenthood, while not the only cause of a gender division in the workforce, is one of the most significant, obvious, and age-old. As of 2020, the United States was one of only three countries in the world not to offer statutory paid maternity leave, according to analysis by the International Labour Organization. The U.S Department of Labour additionally found that only 17% of women actually have access to this paid leave. (The Family and Medical Leave Act - or FMLA - guarantees 12 weeks of unpaid leave for new parents, but it doesn't actually require employers nationwide to provide paid leave; that choice is left to individual states, cities, and even companies.)
After childbirth, mothers and fathers continue to see deviating career paths. Understanding Society, the largest longitudinal household panel study of its kind, focused on the U.K. and found that, three years after childbirth, 90% of new fathers were in full-time work or self-employment compared to 27.8% of new mothers. In the five years following childbirth, 26% of fathers had been promoted or had moved to a better job compared to only 13% of mothers. By that time, 4% of fathers had left employment completely compared to 17% of mothers.
According to Deloitte's Women @ Work 2024 report, 50% of women who live with a partner and children additionally bear the most responsibility for caregiving, and nearly 60% of women bear the most responsibility for providing care to another adult (such as a parent or in-law).
But there are other and often less obvious challenges beyond family-planning, family-starting, and caregiving that hinder women's professional careers.
Hiring: A 2024 study by the Muse job board revealed that 41% of women have felt discriminated against based on their gender during a job interview, and 42% said they had encountered gender-biased or inappropriate questions during an interview. 38% of women have hesitated even to apply for a job due to perceived gender bias.
That gender bias continues after a woman is hired. Once in the workforce, 82% of American women 'code-switch' – or adjust their appearances, behaviors, expressions, mannerisms, and/or style of speech. 76% of respondents in a recent Preply survey shared that they code-switch to 'be more professional in general' while about 17% have been told to change their tone or communication style at work. That is, they have been ordered to code-switch. Code-switching is especially prominent for Black women – as are the adverse consequences of not doing so.
Mental Health:
Like hiring and code-switching, mental health has been an issue that affects women disproportionately. Women, after all, are about two times more likely to have depression and/or anxiety than men are. But Deloitte's Women @ Work 2024 report found that mental health among working women specifically has deteriorated year over year. 50% of its 1,000 survey respondents reported that their stress levels are higher now than they were a year ago: a number that increases to 60% for ethnic minorities. Mental health is now one of working women's top concerns, second only to women's rights, and 33% of respondents have taken time off in the past year because of their mental health. And yet, 66% of those same respondents revealed they're not comfortable revealing mental health as a reason for their absence.
Unsurprisingly, like women who are primarily responsible for caregiving, women who regularly work overtime rate their mental wellbeing and other aspects of their lives lower than women who don't work overtime or who share caregiving responsibilities, respectively.
Mentorship: Regardless of whether they're working overtime, providing care, or neither, professional women in general don't usually have other women as resources or guides. HiBob's 4th annual U.S. Women Professionals in the Workplace survey found that only 7% of women reported having a formal mentor at work compared to 15% of men. (Ironically, 12% of women expressed a desire for a mentor while only 9% of men said the same.)
Similarly, the Muse job board survey found that 55% of its respondents felt as though there wasn't enough female representation in their organization's leadership. 79% of women added that, when looking for a new job, they are more likely to seek out companies that have equal representation of men and women in managerial/leadership positions than companies with fewer women than men in those roles.
In short, although working women are looking for it, female representation - and, thus, mentorship - is lacking.
Pain: The lack of female leadership can have consequences beyond just mentorship; it can also affect policies that, in turn, help an upcoming group of women rise and succeed.
One of those potential policies is around menstrual health. Deloitte's research reveals that more than 40% of women who experience high levels of pain during menstruation simply work through it. 16% of Deloitte's survey respondents have taken time off due to menstruation or menopause but haven't shared their reason for that absence with their employer, 13% reported that they don't feel comfortable discussing menstruation's impact on them with their manager, and 9% said they cited menstruation as the reason for taking time off and their career was adversely affected. 6% also reported that they had previously discussed menstruation's impact on them, and their employer's lack of support actually was a factor in their subsequent decisions to leave their entire organization entirely.
Women who are experiencing or who are approaching menopause, meanwhile, compose about 20% of the current workforce, In 2024, 39% said they've experienced pain or discomfort at work due to menopause: more than double the percent who said the same the prior year. The number of U.S companies offering menopause-specific benefits, though, is only about 5%.
Multiple studies have shown that women in government leadership positions implement policies that are supportive of women and children alike, such as contraception access and menstrual health policies. The same can be true for the private sector - but only 40% of managers, 29% of C-suite executives, and 10.4% of Fortune 500 CEOs were female as of 2024.
Performance & Promotion: Even if women are able to show up and perform well in their workplaces, their confidence around their performance remains lower than men's. Hibob's Women Professionals research found that 65% of women strongly agreed they regularly do a good job compared to 69% of men, 56% of women believe their managers and coworkers value their work compared to 60% of men, and 51% of women believe their coworkers value their contributions compared to 58% of men.
Even if women do have both the skills and confidence, McKinsey & Company's 'Women in the Workplace 2024' report noted that 81 women were promoted for every 100 men last year. That reality doesn't escape women's notice either; the Muse job board study revealed that 66% of respondents believe women in their industry have a 'hard time getting promoted'.
Merit-based reward systems actually increase these gender inequalities – not decrease them. Multiple studies, in healthcare and other industries, have uncovered this 'paradox of meritocracy'. One study in particular had 445 M.B.A. students assume the role of a manager. The 'managers' who were told that they were in a company that emphasized meritocracy awarded male employees, on average, a $46 higher bonus than they gave to equally-performing female employees. On the contrary, those who were told that they were in a company that emphasized managerial discretion awarded female employees, on average, a $51 higher bonus than they gave to equally-performing male employees. Based on these results, the study authors speculated that the second group of 'managers' may have been trying to over-correct; that is, to make up for the bias against women they believed would exist when rewards are dependent only upon managerial discretion.
Looking Forward
These challenges – across hiring, mental health, mentorship, pain, performance, and promotion – have remained the same for women year after year. The significant and recent political changes though have added a new layer of uncertainty and subsequent stress for working women. For example, in a 'Women in the Workplace' survey from Fairygodboss, 79% of the 428 female respondents believe that the removal of DEI initiatives will negatively affect opportunities for women in the workplace. 52% are concerned about job security or new job opportunities because of the changes (such as funding cuts and policy changes) by the federal government. Similarly, 50% reported that anxiety over the current political climate is influencing their own career plans while 40% said that anxiety is affecting their behavior at their current role.
Hibob's Women Professionals research came to a similar conclusion: all-in-all, women have more anxiety around their futures than men do. Looking forward, 57% of women anticipated improvements in their work-life balance compared to 62% of men, 26% of women anticipated a promotion compared to 34% of men, 58% of women felt confident about financial recognition in the year ahead compared to 66% of men, and 5% of women anticipated worsening conditions compared to 4% of men.
This list of gender-based challenges that working women face is not all inclusive. Rather, it means to illustrate that the same barriers continue to hold women back - and now women are also facing additional anxiety due to the federal politics around them. Like the rest of these obstacles, this stress affects women more than men. And even female CEOs are not completely immune from gender-based divisions in the workplace. As the Movchan Agency found, the public's interest is not in these leaders' accolades, their accomplishments, or even their successful navigation of gender biases in their professional worlds but rather, remains largely in their husbands.