These are unprecedented times for women. Women are bearing more than past generations at work, at home and in all other sectors of their lives. Due to limited time and opportunity cost, women are setting priorities based on what they have to get done in a day; given time constraints, women are postponing their own healthcare needs. The Skimm State of Women Report found that women are often the “chief worry officers” in their households, deprioritizing their needs over the needs of others, at a detriment to their own health and well-being. Their research shows that:
- 70% of millennial women struggle to put their health first, with nearly half routinely skipping preventative-care appointments.
- 58% of women often prioritize the health of their families over their own. Sixty-three percent of women have trouble prioritizing their health in general.
- Nearly 50% of American women have skipped a recommended preventative-care appointment in the last year.
Why Women Are Deprioritizing Their Healthcare Needs
In my interview with The Skimm’s co-founder and co-CEO, Carly Zakin, she said, “Self-advocacy means taking the time to make your health a priority. Women [face] a lot of headwinds to prioritizing their health. It’s hard to take time off of work, health insurance is difficult to navigate and women are often dismissed about their health issues once they see a doctor, being called ‘emotional’ or ‘stressed’ disproportionately to men.”
Don’t Wait Day Helps Women Reprioritize Their Healthcare Needs
Research shows that prioritizing healthcare needs starts with making the first appointment. That is why The Skimm launched Don’t Wait Day this year. Don’t Wait Day is a day in which employers give their teams time off to make healthcare appointments. Employers can honor the day, managers can offer that time to their teams and colleagues can offer to cover for others’ time off to take care of their health.
In my interview with Danielle Weisberg, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of theSkimm, she said “At theSkimm, we believe that women’s health shouldn’t take a backseat. Our #DontWait campaign is about transforming awareness into action—empowering women to make their health a priority in their everyday lives. We recognize that too often self-care is viewed as a luxury rather than a fundamental necessity, and we need to change that narrative.”
Zakin stated, “We wanted to turn this into a point of action. We wanted women to be able to put themselves first starting with one day. Women are doing everything for everyone else and they cannot continue to do all of those things if they are not healthy.”
Don’t Wait Day is not about just giving people time off. “This is about protecting the business, not detracting from work getting done. It is a lot more convenient to plan time off proactively versus reacting to an employee’s health crisis,” Zakin highlighted.
How does self-advocacy translate into action? The Skimm’s research suggests it starts with preventative care. Mammograms, well-woman exams, skin-cancer checks and colonoscopies are critical areas women need to be more proactive about.
Scripts Help Women Reprioritize Their Healthcare Needs
To help women make that important first step in scheduling their appointments, The Skimm developed a convenient, free, personalized tool designed to help women identify the essential appointments and screenings they need. “Skimm Scripts gives her the words and structure for the awkward conversations to advocate for herself with medical professionals. Essentially, it helps women be better prepared to challenge their doctors when they are not listening. It gives women words and phrases they can lean into at the moment. The worst feeling is to feel helpless when you need help,” Zakin underscored.
Kamini Ramdeen-Chowdhury, Managing Editor of theSkimm also said, “The most impactful part of this tool is that it is not just a one-day activation, or a one-time reminder. The tool will live on theSkimm’s site for women to keep using over and over again, to help them make preventive care part of an ongoing lifestyle change. We know lasting change takes more than just individual action and our hope is for men, brands, and workplaces to stand with women in prioritizing preventive care too. When allies step up to support, they help create a culture where women feel empowered to take care of their health — and that’s when real change starts to take root.”
“The Skimm’s mission is for this generation of women to live smarter, make the most critical decisions in [their lives]—financial, health, voting—categories women have been left out of historically. It is inherently in our DNA to take complex issues and tell women what they need to know,” Zakin said.
American women are deprioritizing their healthcare needs. To help women reprioritize their healthcare needs, consider Don’t Wait Days or scripts to help support women.