Depression:
why women pay the highest price.

18.2% of women versus 12.8% of men. An official report shows the gap has almost nothing to do with hormones. It is mostly social.

On 2 November 2026, France's High Council for Equality between Women and Men published a report on mental health and gender. The finding is clear: women are more affected by depressive disorders, and the gap appears from puberty. Among teenage girls, symptoms rise from age 12.

The load, not the hormones

The report finds the role of hormones minimal. What weighs is living conditions: precarity, violence, mental load, psychosocial risks at work, isolation. It also highlights perinatal depression, care jobs, which are largely held by women, and older women.

What companies can do

Some of these causes play out at work: working hours, recognition, sharing of tasks, the right to speak without being judged. That is the purpose of Veezen's Pink Sessions: bringing prevention into the company, with doctors facing the teams, without taboo.

Source: High Council for Equality between Women and Men (France), report “Mental health: gender and depressive disorders”, 2 November 2026. If you are in distress, talk to your doctor.