2023-09-21 09:12:12
Published on September 21, 2023 at 9:02 am
Women’s mental health is deteriorating. This is the clear finding drawn up by the “Occupational Health Barometer”, published this Thursday by Malakoff Humanis.
“Several indicators led us to believe that there was a female subject,” says Anne-Sophie Godon, director of services at Malakoff Humanis. “More of them are arrested, we also saw that they were more worried about their family, or for the future, and that they were more faced with single parenthood,” she lists.
The results of the study published this Thursday confirm this intuition. 44% of women report poor psychological health, compared to 32% of men. 40% of them made the same observation in 2020. Sleep disorders, fatigue and anxiety are the ailments that affect them the most, and increasingly. In addition, 52% of them declare themselves professionally exhausted.
Multiple subjects of anxiety
Why such a gap? Particularly because women generally seem more worried than men. Current events punctuated by epidemics, wars, and violence would thus be a source of concern for 82% of women, compared to 71% of men. Pollution, drought, storm, flood… 80% of women, compared to 69% of men, also say they are concerned about the environment.
Personal and professional situations are cited to explain the poor state of health of women. One of the main personal reasons put forward, however, is not completely unrelated to the world of work. This is about the financial situation.
A heavy financial situation
“There is a sort of vicious circle, more women work part-time because they also take care of the family more often and this explains the income gap. They also have less access to professional progression over time. Ultimately, we combine both personal and professional issues,” analyzes Anne-Sophie Godon. For example, women represent 85% of cases of single parenthood, which sometimes plunges them into precariousness.
Their financial situation is thus the first personal reason given by women (39%) to explain their poor state of psychological health. This is only the fifth reason given by men, who are more concerned about their complicated family situation (37%), their physical health problems (29%), current events (27%) or their social isolation ( 27%).
The role of the companies in question
Another element put forward to explain their degraded mental health: the over-representation of women in the health sector, which is very psychologically distressing. Thus, 67% of employees in the health and social action sector are women.
For companies, taking into account issues that specifically affect women is essential. “On the one hand, there is a legal issue and for the rest it is a real performance issue of business loyalty,” underlines Anne-Sophie Godon. Maternity, endometriosis and menopause are among the areas of work. But women are demanding more. 65% of women want to receive psychological help in the company in the event of personal or professional difficulties.
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