Pippa Andrews: The gender activity gap is real
Given the many barriers facing women, organisations can play a transformative role in helping female employees fulfil the levels of physical activity they so clearly want and need, writes Pippa Andrews, Director of Corporate Business for Vitality.
Often overlooked is that the UK workforce is not homogenous. We are a complex fabric of ages, personalities and social backgrounds, with varying levels of opportunity available to us, driven by vastly different hopes, dreams and reasons to get up in the morning. Every one of us is different.
It’s therefore also true that businesses need to adapt to a vast array of individual needs to get the most out of their people. Especially given that productivity losses within organisations – due to increasing absenteeism and presenteeism – cost the UK economy an estimated £138bn in 20231.
And, if our new report - titled ‘Active Women, Healthy Lives: Understanding Barriers to Women’s Participation in Physical Activity’ - is anything to go by, this especially applies to half of the UK population. You guessed it: women.
Women's health in crisis?
It’s no secret that the UK is facing a huge amount of pressure from a health perspective. By 2040, the number of people living in poor health in England is projected to reach 9.1 million – almost one in five of the adult population2.
The links between lack of physical activity and growing rates of diabetes, heart disease and cancer are well known, but as a nation we are not getting any healthier.
Less than one in four (23%) of women engage in 30 minutes of exercise or achieve 7,000 steps a day, five or more times a week, with women aged 40 to 59 recording the highest levels of inactivity3.
It’s also notable that, when women are working out, weight management is the key motivating factor (41%), compared to other health benefits such as mental wellbeing (26%) or increased muscle mass and strength (12%)3.
What's holding women back?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, time is a common barrier for women being more active, with many reporting the juggle of busy work schedules and child-care responsibilities. No doubt aggravated in recent years by a cost-of-living crisis and childcare challenges, such as rising fees and capacity shortages4.
Another sobering fact found in the report is that, body image concerns and a fear of being judged also rank highly as negatively impacting women’s physical activity levels (62%)3.
Elsewhere, psychological factors are most likely to prevent younger women from engaging in physical exercise - a staggering 70% of 20- to 29-year-olds report this3.
Addressing the say-do gap
All of this is despite 41% of women expressing a desire to reach their recommended activity levels3. Clearly there is a discrepancy between what women want to do and what they feel they can do.
The report lays bare the plethora of challenges women face, noting that women themselves feel responsible for their own physical activity levels, despite many of them being a product of our society. The onus cannot continue to sit with women themselves, but with government, employers and the health insurance industry who have significant opportunities to make a difference here.
At a wider societal and government level, this involves measures like expanding funding for grassroots sport and physical activity to make it more inclusive and accessible for women. Reflected in the fact that, concerningly, only 4% of women are taking part in team sports3, with all the social and community benefits this can bring.
The report also recommends that targeted health and wellbeing interventions are needed and calls on employers to register the health and wellbeing of their people at board level.
The hope is that this will play a transformative role, by moving away from a one-size-fits all approach to employee wellbeing, specifically with female employees in mind; to help organisations better understand where and when different employees need support, while improving the uptake of any interventions on offer in a way that boosts their benefits for the business.
An embedded, holistic solution
To properly move the dial on staff productivity, this report adds to the already compelling case that employees require a joined-up holistic approach to health and wellbeing, tailored to individual lifestyles and life stages. This applies as much to women in the workplace as it does all ages, genders and demographics.
It starts with the culture of an organisation – from offering flexible working to a C-suite that fully understands and considers the reality people face. And this needs to play out in employee benefits packages too.
If done well, group private medical insurance can offer a turnkey solution that doesn’t just deliver access to the right care when needed, at a time when employees really value it. It can also deliver personalised, targeted support specific to female employees, alongside primary care services too.
As the report outlines, this might involve a specific focus on health, wellness and activity, during health checks or clinical appointments that women have for things such as pregnancy, or during the menopause.
Equally, making the right tools available to women that support them to take steps to being more active and build healthier habits through incentives and rewards cannot just boost their individual wellbeing, but the financial health of the business too. This is something we see in action with unique benefits like the Vitality Programme, which is proven to help people increase their physical activity levels and with this staff productivity.
Ultimately, until the state of UK’s health improves, the working environment needs to change to become more supportive of people’s different life stages. It’s time for businesses to think long and hard about the barriers they could help lift, especially for women. This isn’t just better for the bottom line of a business, it benefits employees individually. And wider society obviously needs it too.
Where to next?
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Five steps to get staff active: The mental benefits of physical activity
With the theme of Mental Health Awareness Week ‘moving for our mental health’, we dig into the connections between physical activity and mental health and offer some tips for employers to get their staff more active.
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Gemma's Story: 'It doesn't even feel like I'm doing exercise'
When Gemma wanted to get active after having her first child, her Vitality plan provided her with the boost and incentives, and she discovered being active didn’t have to be as strenuous as running or regularly hitting the gym.
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Prevention is about more than just wellbeing
With rising numbers of people living with long-term health conditions, we must prioritise the prevention of illness to offset unprecedented healthcare demand. But it needs to be about more than just promoting healthy living, writes Dr Keith Klintworth, Managing Director VitalityHealth.
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1 Britain's Healthiest Workplace, 2024
2 Health in 2040: projected patterns of illness in England - The Health Foundation
3 'Active Women, Healthy Lives: Understanding women's barrier participation in physical activity', Vitality, November 2024
4 Childcare shortage worsens as costs rise - report - BBC News
5 The 'Motherhood Penalty' Is Making Me Choose Between My Career & Having A Second Child | Glamour UK