Women’s mental health has historically been underfunded and under-researched, with just three per cent of neuroscience and psychiatry studies between 2009 and 2019 conducted exclusively in females, compared to about 30 per cent in males, according to research cited by Manulife Canada’s Georgia Pomaki during a session at Benefits Canada’s 2025 Mental Health Summit.
Yet, with mental-health costs increasing for organizations and women accounting for a growing share of mental-health claims, employers have a vested interest in better understanding women’s mental health.
“Women have 1.5-times higher rates of new long-term disability claims due to mental-health issues compared to men, with an average two weeks’ longer duration,” said the insurer’s director of mental health best practices, Canadian disability and group life. “Young women are especially affected, [with] higher rates of anxiety, depression and mental health-related disability.”
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Women’s mental health is challenged by unique health experiences, she said, such as pregnancy and menopause, health impacts from conditions that affect women differently or more severely and caregiving demands that see half of working mothers missing work to care for sick children.
In addition, the pandemic had a disproportionate effect on women. In 2020, Statistics Canada reported that 37.1 per cent of women said their mental health had worsened (compared to 28.5 per cent of men). Four years later, in 2024, 27.2 per cent of women were still reporting poor to fair mental health (compared to 22.85 per cent of men), according to the Canadian Mental Health Association.
However, structural changes to supports and benefits can have lasting positive impacts to women’s mental health, said Pomaki. An important resource is the National Standard for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace, which ranks interventions from most to least effective. As chair of the technical committee for the new edition of the standard, she encouraged attendees to take advantage of the opportunity to share feedback when a draft is released for public review in the fall.
She recommended employers consider strengthening coverage for counselling and mental-health services, extending access to more types of practitioners, lowering out-of-pocket costs for care, offering access to virtual mental-health services, providing mental-health literacy training, assisting with care navigation, doing thorough return-to-work planning and encouraging peer support through, for example, employee resource groups.
“The disparities in health-care access, treatment and outcomes that women experience can directly influence workplace productivity and job satisfaction,” said Pomaki. “We need to do more to normalize these experiences, eliminate stigma and provide the necessary support and cultural transformation to help women maintain resilience during transitions and different life stages.”
Read more coverage of the 2025 Mental Health Summit.