Challenges that affect Working Women’s Mental Health

Challenges that affect Working Women’s Mental Health

Before entering into the challenges, let us play one game. Imagine a typical working Professional, could say a corporate professional. Imagine them including their hairstyle, attire, how they shake their hands with others, and how they walk, smile, and sit.

Shall I tell you how you imagine?!!

A man with a clean shave, neat hair, and an inserted shirt with or without an overcoat, walks elegantly like the people whom we watched in movies, web series, or sometimes even our loved ones.

Right?

Have you thought about a “Woman” here? Why don’t you think about women as working professionals, even though the percentage of working women is increasing year by year?

Only around 20% of people may think about women when I asked to imagine. Even our thoughts are patriarchal, isn’t it? So just think about the myriad challenges faced by working women, as she is not considered a professional even by their own community.

I have to document here that many men are making untiring efforts to bring women into the working society and advocating for their rights and equality. Hats off to those men and appreciate them. So the purpose of the comparison between men and women that I am going to share is purely intended to bring awareness, understanding, and inclusion.

Here are some challenges that affect every working woman’s mental health:

Mental health has a huge impact on every woman’s ability to perform well in their work. I am going to share the nuances of the challenges in detail which is not only about time management, productivity, and work-life balance but also about patterns of behaviors that affect their mental health and create the primary obstacles to women’s advancement to leadership positions.

How so-called “Normal” questions affect her Mental Health:

“See, when you go to work, who will take care of your children and your parents-in-law?” –Question from the family side.

“We can’t raise your salary at present since we are giving priority to that man. You can adjust, you are not the breadwinner of your family. Why don’t you think from this perspective” – Question from Office.

From the family side, they don’t consider her desires, passion, and identity and from the work side, they don’t consider her work, time, and skills. Many women accept the above things by losing them entirely which ultimately affects their mental & emotional health.

Biases:

Biases are quite common, but this gender descriptive bias leads to many assumptions which result in affecting women’s mental health.

Men get the benefit of the doubt when it comes to professional areas or success, but a woman encounters beliefs that they are just not good or fit for certain jobs.

Don’t you feel the assumptions? Assumptions about women and assumptions about professionals. The classical example is “Marketing”. Being a woman, it is difficult for her to roam, travel, and bring success in the marketing area.

Women have to prove it again:

Women have to prove it again and again in their professional area to equalize their competency with men. Because of the repeated efforts of trying to prove their competency, burnout happens to women very early. You know what, it eventually ends in gender-based bias and concludes that she is not fit for these kinds of jobs.

Why does she need to prove it again and again, because

“Women are judged on their Achievements but Men are judged on their potential”

Prescriptive bias:

Prescriptive bias means how a person is expected to behave and when someone does not conform to these prescriptive roles and behaviors, they can be penalized or punished.

So you can understand now, what are problems and challenges, a woman can encounter based on prescriptive bias. Let’s see the basic common things.

What is the stereotype for positive or successful Masculinity?

Ability to take control and make tough decisions
Sound judgment
Assertiveness – EI
Leadership

What is the stereotype of positive or successful feminism?

People-oriented
Empathetic
Understanding
Nurturance

Being in a managerial position, He or she should be professionally competent and emotionally intelligent, to achieve this, each one should embrace both masculine energy and feminine energy.

For Men, it is completely taken and accepted as a Leader!! But

For women, the same kind of leadership behavior can be taken as abrupt, bossy, and lack of social skills.

If she follows only the feminine pattern, she has to prove it again and again which results in burnout that eventually affects her work and ends up in mental and emotional disturbances.

If she possesses masculine energy, she is respected but it is difficult for people to like her. The same thing is not applied to men.

Psychologist Susan Fiske, “Women like racial and ethnic minorities often have to choose between being liked but not respected or being respected but not liked”.

So women need to combine competency with likability and social style to balance masculine and feminine energy. How? Let’s see in upcoming articles.

Other common examples of prescriptive bias in our day-to-day professional life are

“Women are gossiping!! Men are talking about Business!!” Is that true?

If a woman asks for raises and promotions, she faces backlash for being self-promoting. But whether it is applied to men? Not at all, they won’t face any backlashes, instead, they are seen as having assertive personalities, and their points are taken into consideration.

The very important point is that the reason for the above factors is not only the Men community but also the Women’s community. Women tend to judge each other because of their strategies in the workplace and try to navigate their path {Masculine or Feminine} which often pit them against each other.

Fewer work opportunities:

If she is a young unmarried woman, she is rejected because she is about to get married.
If she is a married woman, she is rejected because she is about to have kids.
If she comes after maternity leave, she is rejected for a career gap.

Rejection may be a job opportunity pay raise salary hike or promotion, whatever may be the factor, rejection is neither based on their skills nor their experiences but only for being a woman.

Other challenges that affect working women’s health are,

Difficulty in finding “Self-time”: The prolonged working hours lead to poor food habits, and lack of sleep which eventually spoils their entire health.

Work-life balance: Work-life balance connects the majority of the areas of our life which includes Health, Stress, Relationships, and overall well-being. Though many folks are aware of the importance of Work-life balance, still poor work-life balance is the major important causation of illness in women’s health.

Sexual Harassment: Though the awareness of POSH {Prevention of Sexual Harassment} and the creation of the POSH committee is available in many corporate sectors, Women are still facing these kinds of issues which affect their overall mental health and performance.

Relatively small problems have surprisingly larger effects over time!!

A very small difference in how men and women are treated can lead to huge gaps in their Health, pay, promotion, and prestige.

Similarly, a very small change in seeing and considering a woman at work can change many things in society which has a positive influence on Women’s mental health.