How senior women negotiate flexibility without stepping back

According to Deloitte's 2025 survey of 7,500 women across 15 countries, 36% report more stress than a year earlier, and 29% describe their mental health as poor. That total includes a large group of women who run a team by day and handle a parent's pill organizer by night, many of whom have never breathed a word about that second job in the office.

Why this figure deserves your attention, especially here in Milwaukee

A year-over-year climb in stress is nothing unfamiliar to those who study workplaces. What deserves your notice is who is reporting it: a worldwide sample of working women, more than a third of whom describe the last twelve months as harder than the twelve before. That is not an unlucky week. It reflects a pattern that cuts directly through the stretch of life when a woman is most established professionally and her parents are most vulnerable. The two curves meet somewhere around age 50, and few workplaces, in Milwaukee or anywhere else, have built a calendar for that meeting point.

What the numbers measure, and what they miss

Deloitte's Women at Work survey spans many countries and is too large to dismiss as one company's unhealthy culture. The data rest on self-reporting, so they reflect how women describe their own state rather than any formal medical assessment. The survey does not isolate eldercare as the source of the strain. Stress of this kind arrives from many directions, and looking after an aging relative is just one among them. Read the number as a picture of the conditions you are working in, not a verdict on your own circumstances. Deloitte also found that just 5% of women plan to stay with their employer for more than five years, which suggests how many are quietly weighing an exit rather than starting a conversation.

The phone call that reached a Milwaukee office at 2:40 on a Tuesday afternoon

Mid-meeting, your screen flashes with a call from the care facility where your mother lives. You step out. Her fall was minor, yet a person needs to be on site before five o'clock. You go back in, wrap up the agenda, and then reshuffle the rest of your afternoon for the next three hours without a word to your colleagues. A vice president who leaves at four to look after her mother is, in too many offices, a vice president who is "stepping back," and you have watched that label attach itself to other women like a burr.

What it means for you, whether you work in Waukesha or West Allis

Senior leaders in Milwaukee rarely have shared language for discussing elder care. A parent taking leave for a new baby is handed paperwork, a timeline and a plan for coming back. Someone caring for an older parent gets only a handset buzzing in a pocket and a story they feel unable to share. With no shared language, every absence gets translated into the one language available, which is a loss of commitment. The fix is to provide the vocabulary yourself, before someone else offers an inaccurate version.

What comes next

Push for flexible arrangements instead of relying on goodwill. You might say something along the lines of: "I'm managing care for a parent in Greenfield." This is a scheduling challenge, not a question of whether I can do my job, and this is the approach I'm taking." I'm unreachable Tuesdays and Thursdays from four to six, I'll cover anything urgent by seven, and nothing else changes." You have named the situation, set its limits and kept your scope intact. The phrase most managers are listening for is "nothing else changes," because that is the part they were worried about. Then ask a single question: "What would you need to see to be confident this is working?" That turns a worry into a measure, and a measure can be met.

Weigh what it would take to voice that opening line against what staying quiet is already taking from you.