Now in its fourth year, Deloitte’s Women @ Work: A Global Outlook, a survey of 5,000 women in workplaces across 10 countries, explores some of the critical workplace and societal factors impacting women’s careers. Rising stress levels and poor mental health persist. And fewer women report feeling supported by their employers to balance work responsibilities with their commitments outside of work—a trend that is leading some women to switch employers.

Although women working in a hybrid model are reporting better experiences this year than last, many have recently been asked to return to the office and are reporting adverse effects on their mental health and productivity.   

This year, the report also further explores women’s physical health, revealing a startling number of women working through pain or symptoms related to menstruation, menopause, and fertility. It also reveals worrying statistics on safety and non-inclusive behaviors in the workplace.

“Despite a small number of improvements since last year, our survey tells us that women are facing mounting pressures in the workplace, their personal lives, and in their communities,” says Emma Codd, Global Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer, Deloitte. “Globally, women feel their rights are backsliding, they are experiencing increased stress and taking on the majority of household tasks at home. Alongside this they are experiencing non-inclusive behaviors at work, are concerned for their safety and feel unable to disclose when they are experiencing women’s health challenges. This is a situation that must change—and employers must enable this.”

Half of women say their stress levels are higher than they were a year ago and a similar number say they’re concerned or very concerned about their mental health. Mental health is a top three concern for women globally (48%), falling behind only their financial security (51%) and rights (50%).

Women are feeling the weight of misbalanced caregiving and domestic responsibilities. Notably, 50% of women who live with a partner and have children say they take the most responsibility for childcare—up from 46% in 2023, with only 12% saying this falls to their partner. Further, 57% of women who live with a partner and are involved in care of another adult say they take the greatest responsibility for this—up from 44% in 2023, while only 5% say this responsibility falls to their partner.

Meanwhile, more than two in five women bear the most responsibility for cleaning and other domestic tasks, similar to 2023. These pressures are taking a toll: women who take on the greatest share of household responsibilities are far less likely to say they have good mental health than those who do not. And nearly half say they have taken time off work for mental health reasons in the past year, compared with just under a quarter of women who don’t have the greatest responsibilities for these tasks.

The result of this disproportionate allocation of responsibilities makes it more challenging for women professionally—only 27% of women who bear the greatest responsibility at home say they can disconnect from heir personal life and focus on their careers.

Samsung has announced global launch of its Galaxy S23 Series with pre-orders of the new devices outstripping last year’s Galaxy S22 series and doubling those of Galaxy S21 series within the first week.

This year, pre-order results were even higher than those of the Galaxy S22 series, with 60 per cent of consumers opting for the most premium Galaxy S23 Ultra.

President and Head of Mobile eXperience Business at Samsung Electronics, TM Roh, said, “The great momentum we’re witnessing speaks to customers’ excitement about products that push the envelope and give them the freedom to express themselves creatively.”

“This year’s pre-order numbers echo our customers’ strong trust in our brand and demonstrate how our commitment to ground-breaking innovation and sustainability continues to resonate with consumers.”

Led by the Galaxy S23 Ultra with its new 200MP Adaptive Pixel sensor and iconic embedded S Pen, the Galaxy S23 series, also featuring the Galaxy S23+ and Galaxy S23, represents a new era of Samsung’s ultimate premium phone experience.

The Galaxy S23 series features epic cameras that give users more freedom to explore their creativity, fast mobile graphics thanks to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Mobile Platform for Galaxy, and a striking design that advances the company’s sustainability commitments with more components made using recycled materials than in any other Samsung Galaxy smartphone. 

Samsung Galaxy S23 series also unlocks the next level of mobile security with Samsung Message Guard. This powerful sandboxing tool pre-emptively protects against zero-click exploit attacks. This is a new kind of cyberattack where just receiving an image can compromise a device – even without the user’s interaction. Samsung Message Guard acts as a virtual quarantine, trapping harmful images and ensuring you receive safe images.

 Samsung Galaxy’s epic camera gives users more freedom to explore their creativity, like capturing truly cinematic Nightography videos with transformative AI.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Mobile Platform for Galaxy unleashes premium experiences, including groundbreaking AI, future-ready mobile gaming feature and powerfully sustained game play with the world’s fastest mobile graphics.

On the Galaxy S23 Ultra, an embedded S Pen that many long-time Samsung Galaxy users know and love offers more possibilities for productivity, notetaking, hobbies and more.

All the Galaxy S23 series’ new standard-setting innovations are housed within a striking design that advances the company’s sustainability commitment with more components made using recycled materials than any other Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

India is making a host of its e-governance tools – including the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and Aadhaar identity service – available to other countries via open APIs.

Available via the India Stack website, the project is “a set of open APIs and digital public goods that aim to unlock the economic primitives of identity, data, and payments at population scale”.

Says the site: “The principles, technologies, and functionality of India Stack can be applied in any country. None of the systems which comprise India Stack require any proprietary technology or intellectual property which would preclude their implementation in any other country.”

In a speech during Digital India Week, prime minister Narendra Modi boasted about the success of the instant payments network, UPI, claiming: “Everyone, including the World Bank, has appreciated it as the best platform.”

Launched in 2016, the UPI has now handled 99 billion transactions, recording 2200 every second in May.

Along with the RuPay card network, UPI has been central to India’s efforts to use digital payments to boost financial inclusion. Modi says this has proved a huge success, noting: “Once, I found that a beggar in Bihar was begging on a platform and he was taking money digitally.”

Says Modi: “Therefore, today digital products like UPI are the centre of attraction for developed countries of the world, or those countries which cannot invest in this type of technology. Our digital solutions have the reach, are secure and have democratic values.”