Lean In y McKinsey had published the report Women in the Workplace 2019.

Women in the Workplace is the largest study of the state of women in corporate America. This year, they collected information from 329 participating organizations employing more than 13 million people and surveyed more than 68,500 employees to better understand their day-to-day work experiences. They also looked back at five years of data to see some powerful trends.

It is full of relevant information, but today I would like to focus in the section that describes the importance of flexibility between work and life. When policies support the work-life balance, employees are happier.

Employees are demanding more flexibility and companies are adapting. Most companies offer some kind of flexibility to their employees so they can set their own schedules or work from home. Remote work is very valued among employees.

On another note, many employees take a break because they become parents or because they have a major health issue.However, they do it concerned about the negative impact of this decision in their careers and finances. This is more common among women.

Women feel they have more negative consequences when they take a leave: 20% of women who have taken a leave say it negatively impacted their career and their financial well being, compared to 10% of men.

Double-career couples are more common. Nowadays, 56% of men have a partner that works full-time, compared to 47% in 2015. 81% of women have a partner that works full-time, compared to 75% in 2015.

This difference increases when employees are more senior. 72% of Senior women has a partner that works, compared to 37% of men at the same level of seniority. In other words, men that progress at work, has more probability of having a stay-at-home partner.

Regarding household activities, there is big gender gap: 39% of women at a double-career couple, report doing all or most of the household activities at home, compared to only 11% of men.The good news is that there is a generation change: younger women at double-career couples do less household activities compared to older women at double career couples.

Photo by Corinne Kutz on Unsplash