In 2025 she feels it’s world vs women

Women’s relationship with the outside world is a stressful one.

In 2023 we identified that a whopping ninety per cent of women think society expects them  to live up to impossible standards, yet they also don’t feel supported by society, with 79 per cent feeling that the outside world won’t solve their problems. Overall, there was a real sense that equality for women had stalled, if not gone in reverse:

“It really scares me where the world is going; it's so polarized in so many different areas and it's only going to get worse. It incenses me. It’s all to do with control in society and minorities, like women, get squeezed. And I don’t feel like it’s going to get better.” – 30yr old woman, UK

Nearly two years on this sentiment remains unchanged with one exception: it has got even worse.

In 2023, our audience named childcare costs and responsibilities as being the biggest challenge for women, just ahead of violence against women and sexual and reproductive rights. Fast forward to now and it’s a different picture, with violence against women now being cited as women’s No 1 challenge.

Biggest challenges for UK women as a gender

Childcare costs haven’t just been knocked off the top spot, they’ve been pushed right down to fourth place alongside  her health issues being ignored and societal pressures on how she’s rising above it. Millennial and Gen Z women are feeling it’s the world vs them more than ever before.

And it’s hard to argue that she’s wrong. Last summer in the UK, the National Police Chiefs Council completed the first national analysis of the scale of violence against women and girls (VAWG) and reported that 2 million UK women are estimated to be victims of violence perpetrated by men, affecting 1 in 12 women across England and Wales. They declared it an epidemic so serious it amounts to a “national emergency” and 30% of the women 1300 women we spoke to said that the biggest challenge they face personally is feeling unsafe in public spaces.

Nurofen's latest Gender Pain Gap Index report at the end of last year found that that one in 10 women in the UK first had their pain dismissed by a healthcare professional (HCP) between the ages of 10-15 and eighty-one per cent of women aged 18-24 have had their pain dismissed or ignored. When you consider that 29% of the women we spoke to cited the second biggest challenge to them personally was physical health concerns and managing ongoing conditions, the fact  their health is not taken seriously is leaving them feeling alone.

And they don’t feel supported. 62% of the women we spoke to disagree that the government is trying to solve the problems she is facing, with 29% strongly disagreeing. 47% of women equally feel that brands aren’t helping them either,but interestingly 33% were neutral showing an opportunity for brands to step up and be her ally.

So what do brands need to do?

Make her feel less alone. Facilitating connection on and offline will be paramount, but brands also need to keep people company in new ways. Brands need to make people feel like there’s someone beside them even when there isn’t.

Advocate for her. She feels under fire so wants to know that brands have her back and are on her side in a way that’s meaningful and not performative. Brands that take affirmative action to help her generation in the challenges and inequalities will gain loyalty and love.

Be where she is. Even the brands she engages with shouldn’t wait and let her come to them. What else is missing from where these women exist? How else are they not being fully catered for? 

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