Women have played an integral role in the workplace in the last 50 years. Throughout the world, women are finding fulfilling careers, and some women are even out earning their male counterparts. In Communication Challenges Women Face at Work Part 1, we presented the first 5 critical communication challenges women deal with in the workplace.
Still there are more challenges that women face in the workplace. These challenges hinder some women’s abilities to ascend in their profession. Addressing these communication challenges is the first step to overcoming them.
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Achieving work-life balance. One of the major communication challenges many women find balancing the responsibilities of their careers and responsibilities at home increasingly difficult. Being able to fill out reports, prepare for that important meeting or trip, often clashes with the need to cook, grocery shop, attend a baseball game or come home at a reasonable hour.[/note]
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Health Concerns. According to the Centers for Disease Control, another prevalent challenge that women face at work is a prevalence to work related illnesses. Women who work have a higher rate of parasitic disease, respiratory illness, tendinitis, and carpal tunnel syndrome. They also have a higher rate of stress and anxiety disorders because of work-life balance issue and sexual harassment concerns.[/note]
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Discrimination. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women still often earn only 80 cents to the dollar that men do, even if they perform the exact same job. Women are also more likely to be the subject of workplace sexual harassment than their male counterparts. This is often hard to prove, embarrassing, and can socially isolate the victim if the harassment is made public. This is also a leading contributor to the stress and anxiety many women feel at work.[/note]
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Leadership Challenges. Despite being a powerful presence in the workforce, only a small percentage of women hold positons of power or leadership. According to Monster.com, some of the reasons why women still hit the “glass ceiling” is because of fear that they will abandon their careers to have children or to focus on family affairs. However there is some debate that the glass ceiling is also the product of female fears related to being in positions of power.[/note]
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