EY employee death: Young professional Indian women work 55 hours a week, highest globally

The death of a young accountant in India sparks debate on work stress and long hours for women professionals.

The death of Anna Sebastian Perayil, a 26-year-old Chartered Accountant based in Pune, has led to intense discussions about the workload of professionals in India. According to a letter by Anna’s mother, Anita Augustine, the young professional at Ernst & Young (EY) lost her life due to “work stress”.

Ms. Augustine said in her letter to the Chairman of EY that Anna would be assigned “work at night with a deadline [the] next morning”. She added that this was a “systemic issue and goes beyond managers and teams”. According to her, the workload, the new environment, and the long hours took a toll on her daughter. She also alleged that no one from the office turned up at Anna’s funeral.

Ms. Augustine’s anguished letter went viral, eliciting a reply from the Chairman of EY India, Rajiv Memani, who “truly regretted” the fact that employees of the company were absent at Anna’s funeral. “The well-being of our people is my top-most priority,” he said.

The incident has put the spotlight on how the increasing workload in India especially impacts young women who work in male-dominated environments.

Data show that Indian women who have jobs similar to the one that Anna had work for the longest hours globally. In fact, the younger the professional, the more number of hours they work.

Chart 1 shows the mean weekly hours that Indian women work across various job types in 2023.

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