How senior women negotiate flexibility without stepping back
Thirty-six percent of women say their stress has climbed compared with a year ago, and 29% describe their mental health as poor. Deloitte's 2025 study, which polled 7,500 women in 15 countries, is the source of those numbers. The group includes many women who lead teams in offices downtown or in Blue Ash by day and manage a parent's medication schedule at night, and who have never mentioned that second job to anyone at work.
Why this number deserves a second look from you
Rising stress is not new, but the women reporting it are. This is a global sample of working women, and more than a third say the last twelve months were harder than the twelve before. That is not one rough week. It is a trend, and it runs straight through the years when a woman's career is at its strongest and her parents are at their most fragile. The two curves meet somewhere around age 50, and few employers have planned for that meeting.
Where the number comes from and what it misses
Deloitte's Women at Work survey spans many countries, so it is hard to dismiss as one company's unhealthy culture. Still, it relies on self-reporting, which captures how women feel rather than offering a clinical measure. Eldercare is not singled out by the survey as the root cause. Stress has many sources, and caregiving is only one thread. Read the figure as a picture of the conditions many of us work within, not a verdict on your own situation. The same survey found that only 5% of women plan to remain with their employer for more than five years. Taken together, it points to many women quietly considering leaving their roles instead of raising the subject with anyone.
The call that comes at 2:40 on a weekday afternoon
Midway through a leadership meeting in Covington or Mason, your screen shows the name of your mother's care home. You step into the hallway. Her fall was minor, but a family member has to be on site before five o'clock. You return, finish the discussion, and spend the next three hours rearranging your work while saying nothing to your team. A vice president who leaves at four to care for her mother risks being labeled as "stepping back." You have seen that label attach itself to other women, and it tends to stick.
How this affects your day-to-day
At the senior level, caregiving has no formal language. A parent's arrival brings paperwork, fixed dates and a plan for coming back to work. Caring for an aging parent arrives as a buzzing phone in your pocket and a situation you feel unable to talk about openly. Without a shared language, every absence gets read as a loss of commitment. The answer is to name the situation yourself, before someone else defines it for you.
What comes after
Request a clear plan, not just kind words from people in Cincinnati or Greater Cincinnati. Try saying something like: "I'm managing care for a parent. This is a logistics matter, not a capacity matter, and here is how I'm handling it. I'll be unavailable Tuesday and Thursday from four to six, I'll cover anything urgent by seven, and nothing else changes." You have named the situation, set its limits and protected your scope. Most managers are quietly worried about the last part, "nothing else changes," so say it plainly. Then ask one question: "What would you need to see to feel confident this is working?" That turns a vague worry into a measure, and measures can be met.
If you are in Greater Cincinnati and want to test your wording before a difficult conversation, the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber and local women's networking groups such as CREW Greater Cincinnati or the Greater Cincinnati BPW chapter are good places to compare notes with peers who have had the same talk.
Measured against what the silence is already draining from you, what would it take to speak that opening line?