How senior women negotiate flexibility without stepping back

Thirty-six percent of women say their stress is higher than it was a year ago, and 29% rate their mental health as poor, based on Deloitte's 2025 survey of 7,500 women across 15 countries. Those figures capture a large share of women who lead a team during the workday and manage a parent's medication schedule in the evening, and who have never mentioned that second responsibility at the office.

Why the number deserves your attention

Each year, the pressure seems to climb higher than the last, and that pattern is well documented. What should get your attention is the source: a global group of working women, more than a third of whom say the last twelve months were harder than the twelve before. That describes more than a rough few weeks. It is a trend, and it runs straight through the years when a woman's career is strongest and her parents are most vulnerable. The two pressures tend to meet somewhere around age 50, and few employers have planned for that overlap.

Where the strain originates, and which parts of it stay out of view

Deloitte's Women at Work survey covers many countries, so it is difficult to write off as one firm's poor culture. It relies on self-reporting, which means it captures how women describe their own experience rather than offering a clinical diagnosis. It also does not isolate eldercare as a cause. Stress has many roots, and caregiving is only one of them. Read the figure as a picture of the pressure many women are working under, not a verdict on your own circumstances. The same survey found that only 5% of women plan to stay with their employer for more than five years, which suggests how many are quietly weighing an exit instead of starting a conversation.

The phone ringing at 2:40 on a Tuesday afternoon

Mid-discussion in a leadership session, your screen shows a call from the facility where your mother lives. You step into the hall. It is a fall, not a critical one, but someone has to be there by five. You return, finish the meeting, and then spend the next three hours rearranging your day while saying nothing to your team. A vice president who leaves at four to help her mother risks being labeled as "stepping back," and you have seen that label cling to other women like a burr.

How this affects your day-to-day life

Senior leaders have yet to settle on a shared vocabulary for talking about caregiving. Taking parental leave involves paperwork, a set schedule and a plan for coming back to work. Eldercare comes with a phone buzzing in your pocket and a story you feel unable to tell. Without shared language, every absence gets interpreted in the only terms left, which is a loss of commitment. The answer is to find your own words for it before someone else offers a less accurate account.

SHORT Next steps

Push for a workable arrangement rather than hoping for pity. Try phrasing it like this: "I'm coordinating care for a parent. This is a scheduling matter rather than a question of whether I can do the job, and I have a plan for it." "I'm not available Tuesday and Thursday between four and six, I'll respond to anything urgent by seven, and my other responsibilities stay exactly as they are." In that statement you have described the circumstances, drawn the boundaries and left your responsibilities untouched. The phrase most managers actually need to hear is "nothing else changes," because that addresses the concern they were quietly carrying. Follow that with a single question: "What would reassure you that this arrangement is working?" Doing so converts an uneasy feeling into a benchmark, and benchmarks are something you can actually reach.

Compare what speaking that opening line would require from you with what staying quiet is already taking out of you.