The Short Read
- Pregnancy loss is emerging as a serious workplace inclusion issue in India.
- Quest Global’s Cost of Silence report says nearly 78 million working women in India fear job loss or negative career consequences if they disclose miscarriage at work.
- The report also estimates that nearly 70 million women may consider leaving their jobs if employers fail to support them after pregnancy loss.
- The study was conducted with YouGov among 2,000 women and 200 men in India aged 25 to 39.
- Quest Global has launched the Break the Silence campaign and partnered with YourDOST to offer counselling, peer support circles, HR training, and workplace resources.
- Pregnancy loss support is not only a personal kindness. It is now a workplace retention, trust and inclusion issue.
Pregnancy loss is still hidden at work
Pregnancy loss is often treated as something women must carry privately. At work, that silence becomes heavier.
A woman may be grieving, physically recovering, managing medical follow-ups, dealing with family questions and still trying to appear “normal” in meetings. She may not disclose what happened because she fears being judged, replaced, seen as less committed or pushed out of growth conversations.
Quest Global’s Cost of Silence report puts numbers to that fear.
According to the report, nearly 78 million working women in India fear job loss or negative career consequences if they disclose pregnancy loss at work. Nearly 80 million remain silent because they fear judgement. Around 70 million women may consider leaving their jobs if employers do not support them after pregnancy loss.
If you think it is a small well-being issue, it is not. It is a workforce issue.
The report, launched under Quest Global’s Break the Silence campaign, was based on research commissioned with YouGov. It covered respondents from the technology, engineering, and corporate sectors across junior, mid, and senior management levels.
The findings show how workplace silence around women’s health can quietly affect performance, confidence, retention and belonging.
Change in Content has earlier examined how women’s health concerns often remain under-addressed at work through the its report on women’s health concerns in the workplace. The Cost of Silence report adds a sharper layer to that conversation: when women fear professional consequences for sharing pregnancy loss, support becomes less about sympathy and more about trust.
What did the Cost of Silence report find?
Quest Global’s report says 3 in 4 women reported that pregnancy loss reduces their confidence. It then affects their performance while they remain silent. The study also found that workplace support could change how women respond.
- 48% of women said they would feel more comfortable speaking up if workplaces encouraged conversations around pregnancy loss.
- 43% said they would feel greater loyalty towards employers who supported them through such a loss.
- Another 45% said support during pregnancy loss would be reason enough to recommend their employer to others.
These numbers matter because they show that the solution is not complicated in principle.
Women are not asking workplaces to solve grief. They are asking workplaces not to make grief professionally risky.
Quest Global has partnered with YourDOST to create a support ecosystem that includes a 24-hour helpline staffed by psychologists trained in pregnancy loss, peer-support circles, training materials for HR professionals and managers, awareness webinars, and downloadable workplace resources.
The company has also opened these support services to organisations across India at no cost through the Break the Silence initiative.
Pregnancy loss at work: Why employers need to act?
Pregnancy loss is not always visible, and that is exactly why workplaces often fail to respond.
There may be no public announcement, no formal transition plan, no maternity policy trigger, no prepared manager response and no safe way to ask for support. Many offices still treat miscarriage as too personal to be discussed and too uncomfortable to be supported.
That gap can leave women isolated at one of the most difficult moments of their lives.
The issue also intersects with a wider pattern. Women’s pain and health experiences are often minimised, delayed, misunderstood or treated as private inconvenience. Change in Content has previously written about medical gaslighting and healthcare bias against women, and the workplace version of this is equally important. If women feel they must hide pain to protect their careers, the system is not neutral.
Employers can respond with practical steps.
- They can create clear miscarriage and pregnancy loss leave policies.
- They can train managers to respond with care and confidentiality.
- They can offer counselling without forcing disclosure.
- They can allow flexible return-to-work support.
- They can protect women from career penalties after medical absence.
- They can normalise private, dignified conversations instead of leaving employees to guess what is safe to say.
Support does not need to be loud. It needs to be reliable.
The larger workplace lesson
The Cost of Silence report should push Indian workplaces to rethink how they handle women’s health events that do not fit neatly into standard maternity policies.
Pregnancy loss is not the only example. Menstrual health, fertility treatment, chronic illness, menopause, reproductive health concerns and recovery from medical trauma are all part of working life for many women. Yet organisations often expect women to perform as if their bodies are irrelevant to work. That expectation is outdated.
Women do not need workplaces that overreact or reduce them to health concerns. They need workplaces that are mature enough to support them without making support feel like a professional liability.
The way forward is simple: build policies before a crisis, train managers before mistakes, protect privacy before disclosure, and make support available before women feel forced to leave.
Change in Content has also explored why organisations need to take women and illness at work more seriously. Quest Global’s findings make that point harder to ignore.
Pregnancy loss may be personal. But when millions of women fear career consequences for speaking about it, the silence is no longer personal. It is organisational.
Editorial note and disclaimer
This article is based on Quest Global’s press release announcing the Cost of Silence report and Break the Silence campaign, along with reporting by The Free Press Journal. It is written as a short DEI Insights news article for Change in Content. The article does not offer medical or legal advice. It examines pregnancy loss as a workplace inclusion, retention and support issue.
Sources
Quest Global’s press release states that the Cost of Silence report was based on original YouGov research among 2,000 women and 200 men across India aged 25 to 39, and that nearly 78 million women fear job loss or negative career consequences after disclosure of miscarriage. It also states that 70 million women may consider leaving their jobs if employers do not provide support after pregnancy loss.
