How senior women negotiate flexibility without stepping back

Deloitte's 2025 survey of 7,500 women in 15 countries found that 36% feel more stressed than they did a year ago, and 29% rate their mental health as poor. Behind those numbers are many women who run a team during the workday and then handle a parent's prescriptions after dinner, all while keeping that second responsibility private from colleagues.

Why this figure deserves your notice

A rise in stress over a single year is hardly a surprise. What deserves your attention is who is saying it: a global group of working women, more than a third of whom report the last twelve months were harder than the twelve before. This is not simply a difficult week. It is a trend, and it lines up with the stretch when a woman's career is at its height and her parents are at their most vulnerable. The two pressures tend to meet around age 50, and few workplaces have planned for that meeting point.

Its sources and its blind spots

Deloitte's Women at Work survey is large and spans many countries, so it is difficult to write off as the problem of one firm's culture. The data comes from self-reports, so it tells us how women describe their feelings instead of providing a diagnosis. Nor does it point to eldercare as the single culprit. Caregiving is one contributor among several sources of strain. Treat the statistic as a snapshot of the wider climate rather than a judgment about your personal situation. The same survey found that just 5% of women expect to stay with their employer beyond five years, a sign of how many are quietly weighing an exit rather than starting a conversation.

A Tuesday afternoon phone call in Hartford

Midway through a leadership meeting, your screen shows a call from your mother's care facility in West Hartford. You step out. It is a fall, and not a severe one, but someone has to be with her by five. You return to the room, finish the agenda, and then spend the next three hours rearranging your day while saying nothing to your team. A vice president who leaves at four to look after her mother is, in many offices, a vice president who is "stepping back," and you have seen that label attach itself to other women like a burr that never comes off.

Why this matters to you

Senior leaders rarely have agreed-upon words for talking about caregiving. A new parent receives forms, confirmed leave dates and a plan for coming back. Eldercare comes with a phone buzzing in your pocket and a situation you feel unable to describe. Without words for it, every absence gets read through the one framework people have, which is doubt about your commitment. You can fix this by offering the vocabulary yourself before a less accurate version gets offered for you.

What comes after

Request clear arrangements, not pity. Try saying: "I'm handling care for a parent. This is a scheduling challenge, not a question of whether I can do my job, and I'll explain how I'm managing it. I'll be unavailable Tuesdays and Thursdays from four to six, I'll cover anything urgent by seven, and the rest of my responsibilities stay exactly as they are." In that single statement you have named the situation, set its limits and kept your scope intact. The part managers most want to hear is "the rest stays exactly as it is," because that is the part they were worried about losing. Then close with a question: "What would you need to see to feel confident this is working?" That converts a vague concern into something you can measure, and measures are things you can meet.

Weigh the small effort of saying that opening line against what the silence is already taking from you.