May 27, 2026
65% of Employers Are Addressing Women’s Health at Work, So Why Is Progress Still Stalling?
Most organisations know they should be doing more on women’s health at work. The question is why so few are doing it well.
New analysis from global consultancy Kearney, developed with the UNFPA-led Equity 2030 Alliance and the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association, finds that 65% of organisations are actively addressing women’s health issues in the workplace – but that progress is “uneven” and “fragmented.”
The findings come from Kearney’s latest [w]Health Employer Index, a benchmark assessing how organisations embed women’s health into workforce strategy, leadership, and operations across industries and regions.
Strong on Benefits, Weak on Employee Voice
Investment in employee wellbeing is not the problem, the research finds. It is among the strongest areas across sectors, alongside benefits provision and advocacy. Where organisations consistently fall short is in communication, education, and employee voice.
Only 51% provide sex- and gender-specific training. And just 54% consistently track and monitor gender-specific employee data to inform wellbeing strategies and shape policies. Without that data infrastructure, organisations are making decisions and designing support for a workforce they cannot fully see.
These findings suggest that singular initiatives – maternity leave and reproductive benefits, for example – are put in place and treated as sufficient. But without addressing workforce design, leadership accountability, and long-term business strategy, they remain isolated gestures rather than structural change.
This dynamic mirrors what research has found about employee wellbeing more broadly. A landmark study by the University of Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre evaluated 46,336 workers across 233 organisations. It found that employees who used individual wellbeing interventions – mindfulness apps, resilience training, relaxation classes – were no better off than those who did not. The implication here is that programmes without systemic foundations do not move the dial.
Industry Gaps Worth Noting
Progress varies significantly across sectors. Financial services is furthest ahead, with 77% of organisations demonstrating mature action through robust policies and sustained investment. Consumer and retail rank second at 71%, with maturity reflected in training and inclusive culture.
The outlier is healthcare and life sciences, which sits at 63% – two percentage points below the overall average. For an industry closest to health innovation, falling short on data accountability, communication, and inclusive culture is a significant contradiction.
Ranking lowest is the energy and process industries at 58%, with gaps in communication, support networks, and data use.
What Good Looks Like in Practice
The [w]Health Employer Index identifies three priorities for driving more substantial progress. First, ensure equity is designed into policies and practices, “not retrofitted”. Second, connect gender-disaggregated insights to measurable KPIs, leadership incentives, and transparent reporting. Third, democratise access to support and investment by ensuring that no woman – across life stage, role, or geography – is forgotten about.
What does good look like in practice? Speaking at Engage Employee Summit 2026 in London, Carley Stanley, Chief People Officer at JCDecaux, spoke about the importance of moving beyond policy and genuinely showing up for women through redesigning culture. Data segmentation is critical to that effort, she said – the issues surfacing across departments and locations can differ significantly, and treating the workforce as a uniform group will miss them.
Finding allies and supporters beyond the senior leadership team is also vital for progress. And perhaps most important, Stanley added, is investigating what is going unspoken: “What are things that make people feel uncomfortable? What’s not being spoken about? That’s what you need to go and tackle.”
Underlying all of these best practices is a commitment to employee listening. “It’s less about being prescriptive, and more about cultivating cultures that respond to the reality of women’s health experiences,” said Women’s health and wellbeing coach Natalie Nuttall. “It’s an intuitive cycle of listening, understanding and embedding learning within the lifeblood of organisations.”
An area that requires a particularly nuanced approach – building empathy through lived experience – is menopause, which remains one of the most underserved areas of women’s health in the workplace.
Momentum Without Urgency
The business case is not difficult to make. “Women spend more than 40% of their reproductive years in the workplace, making their health a critical factor for their participation in the workforce,” says Mariarosa Cutillo, UNFPA Private Sector and Civil Society Branch Chief.
Gender inequities continue to generate lost productivity, high absenteeism, and restricted workforce participation. “Private sector investment in sexual and reproductive health and rights – from menstrual health to parental leave – is a proven catalyst for reducing absenteeism and boosting productivity,” Cutillo adds.
Most organisations are aware of this. The harder problem is that they have reached a plateau – their actions are demonstrating intent, but not driving change. Awareness without accountability is, at best, a starting point.
