Women suffer more from workplace stress than men....

[DeviTheGaelet]

According to this in the guardian

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/dec/30/women-suffer-much-more-work-stress-than-men-says-psychiatrist

Reasons given are balancing work and family, being disadvantaged by having to "prove" they are as good as men, not being promoted, being undervalued and increasingly the family being reliant on the woman's earning.

This is all depressingly familiar to me and I don't know what we do about it. Comments on this board show that many don't even believe it's an issue even in the face of evidence.

See, I see this as "the expectation is that women will feel more responsible for stuff [and if they do not, they will be penalised}. Men tend to think abou themselves first

I'm sure one way we could help with this would be to improve paternity leave for men. At the moment typically it's the woman who takes time off to look after the baby. The mans work life continues as normal(ish) as she is caring for the baby.
When she returns to work the question is what is she going to do with the baby because it's been her job for the last six / nine months.

I would love it if men got 4 weeks paternity leave at 90% pay. It has to be taken when their partners mat leave ends.
It might help move towards both parents taking on more responsibility for their kids.

If we can get to a place where caring responsibilities fall more evenly maybe that can help reduce discrimation against women in the workplace.

That's really interesting. Would be interesting to know what the mix was in these discussions. More senior people tend to talk more, men are more likely to be senior so does that explain the discrimination. Or is it people of similar experience and you still see men talking over the women.

Research doesn't really get to the stage of being research if it doesn't account for the basics like this.

Incidentally this was definitely something concluded by studies before 2012, I learned it while studying linguistics several years prior, IIRC.

Yeah, I first recall learning about this in the 90s.

Research doesn't really get to the stage of being research if it doesn't account for the basics like this

I was kind of hoping for a link to the research papers, not just taking a persons word for it.

I think Dale Spender wrote on men perceiving women to be in the majority if there are as many as 30% women in a room back in the 1970s, but I can't be bothered to check references at this time of night.

women were under constant, intense pressure, with company restructuring, lack of managerial support and balancing work and family life leaving them feeling drained.

This bit from the article perfectly describes my situation right now, it's quite a revelation to see it written down! My confidence is really low right now and I'm exhausted trying to keep up with all the competing demands of work and home (we have 2 young kids). I've seen men around me at work get promoted for doing the same stuff as me, while I just get told that i'm doing a great job but I need to demonstrate more before I get promoted. The 'more' is never very well defined.

Am tempted to just leave them all to it to start my own business and hire all the awesome women I know.

That's what I did Ruby! I can heartily recommend it.

That's what I feel like too Ruby.

I need to demonstrate more before I get promoted. The 'more' is never very well defined.

According to my managers, it means "doing something really spectacular, like walking on water."

So that was constructive.

Reminds me of this article.

hbr.org/2016/04/research-vague-feedback-is-holding-women-back

Is reassuring that others feel the same DeviTheGaelet, though depressing it's widespread. The "vague feedback" article rings so true, I cannot remember a time anyone gave me more specific feedback than "you're doing a great job, keep doing it" which is bad considering all the lipservice my company pays to the importance of diversity and growing female leaders.

I'm going to channel sparrowhawk and go about being even more awesome this year (until I have the courage to setup that business on my own...)

Have just realised this vagueness applies to me too. Every annual performance review consists of "You're doing a great job", with no pay rise or promotion. The template they use that we fill in consists of a "how can the company help you to help the business" and I always talk about the need for more support staff as I spend a large chunk of time doing work for which I am overqualified (and overpaid for this though underpaid for doing the difficult money-generating work that I should be spending all my time doing) and the staff who should be doing it are busy doing even more menial work which they in turn are overqualified for.
I do discuss my own specific goals in the performance review but I think I will have to spend more time setting, achieving and recording these so I can blast them with concrete, measurable proof of my ability and worth to the company at the next review.

The irony is that more and more economic research shows that undervaluing or not even utilizing in the first place female workers is a massive hindrance to not just individual companies but the entire economy as a whole.

Yetanotherspartacus thanks yes you are absolutely right. V helpful (to me).