However, coming to the end of the year, with the great economic impacts of the pandemic and the hope placed in the recent vaccines created by major pharmaceutical laboratories, there is an area that will require more attention from companies. , government, employers and financial intermediaries: the financial health of workers.
And a separate case must be the financial well-being of women, who are affected by gender inequality dynamics that still permeate multiple aspects of our society. If we put it in a statistical issue, an average worker takes 3 to 6 working hours a week thinking about their financial situation, but if we do a much deeper analysis, what we will find is that the time they allocate to these topics is more great.
Statistics tell us that they spend about 15 hours a month worrying about money issues compared to men who spend 12 hours and one in 5 devotes more than 20 hours to these issues.
Women have different needs and situations that undoubtedly put them in a situation of greater vulnerability to the current economic scenario, having major disadvantages in financial matters. They are the first in line when it comes to caring for children and the sick, to doing unpaid household chores, they are even the first to put aside their careers and jobs if raising children requires it.
To this must be added that their life expectancy is greater than that of men; data from the National Population Council (Conapo) indicate that by 2030, the life expectancy of the female gender will be 79.6 years, while for the male it will be 73.8 years.
Women have unique financial challenges that corporations are not necessarily addressing, so it is vital that firms begin to implement tools and strategies that enable their employees to meet future challenges and achieve their goals at every stage of his professional and personal life.
And what can they do about it? Undoubtedly, they must take into account the socio-economic context we are going through and understand that the cost of living is constantly increasing, which decreases the purchasing power of their employees, as well as the value of their assets. Therefore, they should help them address short- and long-term financial issues, so that if they have fewer financial worries and distractions, employers will benefit from a more focused, committed and productive workforce.
Likewise, those that offer gender-specific financial welfare practices will be more geared toward achieving greater equity within the corporation, as opposed to those that do not.