- Seven years of greater job dissatisfaction for women. The Conference Board’s latest annual Job Satisfaction survey found an increasing gap between women and men.
- Numerous factors contribute to gaps. Compensation and benefits, family leave policies, flexible work options, safety at work, physical and mental health, work culture and more play a role.
- Gather data — then use it. Analyze the factors affecting women in your workplace and use that data to drive priorities and improvements.
Women are significantly less satisfied at work compared to men for the seventh year in a row, with the gap growing, according to the latest Job Satisfaction survey from The Conference Board. Failing to address the problem can have long-term business and culture implications for organizations.
“The main thing that should be noted is the continuation of that gap from 2017 till now,” said Matt Rosenbaum, principal researcher at The Conference Board’s Human Capital Center and one of the report’s authors. “It’s not just a one-year blip. It’s a pretty consistent trend over the last seven years.”
With women making up about 50% of the workforce — and more than half of the college-educated workforce, with an anticipated rising ratio of female college-educated workers — increased job dissatisfaction among women will likely be detrimental to businesses.
“You’re missing out on a lot of value that these workers could bring to the fold if they were given the opportunities they deserve,” Rosenbaum said.
Greater Dissatisfaction with Wages, Mental Health Benefits and More
Women were less satisfied at work in 24 out of the 26 subcategories in the Conference Board survey, with the largest gaps related to bonus plans (10.3%) and potential for future growth (9.8%). Health plans, mental health benefit policies, recognition and acknowledgment, organizational culture, and wages also had significant gaps. Women were also less satisfied with their workplaces’ family leave policies and flexible work options.
Between 2011 and 2016, women and men reported similar levels of job satisfaction. But a gap was first noted in 2017, and it has continued — and grown — for seven years, with a 4.5% overall gap between women and men this year.
The #MeToo movement, launched on a large scale in 2017 after its initial creation by Tarana Burke in 2006, played a role in shining a light on the problems facing women, including in the workplace, and may have encouraged more women to speak up about those problems starting in 2017, Rosenbaum said.
Factors Affecting Women at Work
The Conference Board survey is not the only study pointing out the issues facing working women. Deloitte’s 2024 Women @ Work report found that 50% of surveyed women — including 60% of women of ethnic minorities — said their stress levels had increased in the past year.
The Deloitte report also found:
- 57% of surveyed women said they do not receive adequate mental health support from their employer, and 67% don’t feel comfortable talking about their mental health at work.
- 47% of surveyed women said they are worried about their safety at work, and 31% have experienced microaggressions.
- Many surveyed women said they work through pain related to menstruation, menopause or fertility and feel unable to speak up about those challenges. Notably, 40% of women who experience extreme pain or discomfort from menopause said they work through their symptoms, double from the year before, and 16% (up from 6% in 2023) said that citing menopause as their reason for taking time off has negatively impacted their career.
“Why wouldn’t you provide a workplace where everybody thrives?” said Emma Codd, global chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer at Deloitte. “You can see in the data that’s not the case, so it’s something that needs to be looked at.”
Closing the Gap
Deloitte’s report found women whose workplaces implemented strict return-to-office policies reported impacts on their mental health and productivity — and lack of flexible working hours and poor work-life balance were leading factors in women’s decisions to change jobs in the past year.
However, it’s not enough to offer flexible work options — workplaces need to ensure the employees utilizing them receive the same opportunities. About 30% of women doing hybrid work experienced exclusion from meetings, a lack of predictability in working patterns and a lack of flexibility, according to the Deloitte report. And, almost all women surveyed (95%) believed that requesting or utilizing flexible work opportunities would negatively affect their likelihood of promotion.
“Evaluate seemingly gender-neutral policies for asymmetrical effects,” Rosenbaum said. “If more and more people are being called back into the office, there may be an undue share of the burden falling on women to figure out what to do with childcare, or eldercare, or other household aspects that are not necessarily work-related but deeply affect their work lives.”
Launching a pay equity analysis is another way to address job satisfaction gaps. Government data shows women make 84 cents for every $1 men make in 2024, with larger gaps for women of color and women who work from home. A LinkedIn economic study found women are also disproportionately excluded from top-paying jobs and mid-level management positions in many industries. Being transparent to workers that your organization is analyzing and seeking to address inequities signals that “growth is on the horizon,” Rosenbaum said.
Mental and physical health are major factors contributing to women’s job satisfaction — as well as the quality of benefits and support employers offer in those areas (a September 2023 Deloitte report found women spend more per year on out-of-pocket health-care expenses and get less coverage for every premium dollar spent).
Businesses should not only examine the benefits they offer but also consider how free women feel to speak up about their health and needs in the workplace. According to Codd, organizational culture is the “underpinning” of all other improvements.
“It’s one thing to have policies and it’s another to have a culture where equal representation, women’s expertise and gender equality are embedded in business as usual,” she said. “It’s imperative that everybody feels able to speak up and that firm action is taken.”
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