Two decades of research map how work strains women’s mental health

Working women carry a disproportionate share of unpaid care work and experience higher rates of common mental disorders, and a new systematic review argues that this makes their workplace mental health an economic issue as much as a public-health one. The review, published in Future Business Journal, consolidates twenty years of research on the topic, from 2006 to 2026, and concludes that the field remains fragmented across disciplines, sectors and regions, with cross-sectional surveys dominating the evidence base and causal questions still largely unanswered.

The review followed the PRISMA 2020 reporting guideline and searched Scopus using four strings applied to titles, abstracts and keywords, covering women and mental health at work, work-family conflict and women, occupational stress and women, and work-life balance and women. The search returned 664 records, of which one duplicate was removed, leaving 663 unique records. After screening against eligibility criteria that required peer-reviewed journal articles, adult women in occupational contexts, at least one mental health or well-being construct, English full text and publication between 2006 and 2026, 84 studies were included. Study quality was appraised with the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool, keyword co-occurrence was mapped in VOSviewer, and the evidence was synthesised using the Theory, Context, Characteristics and Methodology framework, known as TCCM.

The authors report that publications have risen sharply since 2020, a period that coincides with the COVID-19 pandemic: 51 of the 84 studies, or 60.7 percent of the corpus, were published between 2020 and 2026, compared with 33 studies across the longer 2006 to 2019 period. The review notes that this temporal correlation is evident but that the causal direction cannot be determined from bibliometric data alone. The second phase also diversified in content, adding pandemic-related stressors, telework, boundary management and burnout among female healthcare workers, alongside growing representation of the Global South.

Geographically, the evidence is concentrated in a handful of countries. India and the United States lead with 12 studies each, followed by Malaysia with 8, Canada with 5, and China including Hong Kong and Macao with 5, while the United Kingdom accounts for 3. Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Central Asia remain markedly underrepresented. The authors argue that this is not merely a coverage gap but a limit on the external validity of the dominant models, because findings from high-income Western settings cannot be assumed to transfer to contexts where formal family-friendly policies are thinner and informal care networks carry more of the load.

Theoretically, the field shows limited convergence. Nine theories were each used in two or more studies, with the Job Demands-Resources model the most popular at 11 studies, followed by Border Theory with 8 and Conservation of Resources theory with 6. The review is anchored in Conservation of Resources theory, which holds that psychological strain arises when valued resources such as time, energy, autonomy and social support are threatened, lost, or not regained after investment. The authors note that the JD-R model, while dominant, treats demands as gender-neutral and does not capture the structural and unpaid-care sources of strain identified in the corpus.

Keyword co-occurrence mapping of author keywords identified three thematic clusters: Work-Family Conflict, Burnout and Emotional Distress; Gender, Stress and Mental Health; and Occupational Stress and Work-Life Balance. Of 268 distinct author keywords, only 18 occurred at least three times, and work-family conflict was the most frequent keyword with 21 occurrences and the highest total link strength, followed by work-life balance with 16 occurrences. The authors interpret the small number of keywords above the threshold and the modest link strengths as signs of a field that is still fragmented, with three related but loosely connected intellectual tracks.

On study characteristics, coding of titles, abstracts and keywords showed that family demands were the most frequently examined antecedent, appearing in 29 studies, followed by individual characteristics in 28 and organisational factors in 27, with work demands in 21 and pandemic or remote-work conditions in 9. The most frequently examined constructs overall were the proximal stressors work-family conflict, in 37 studies, and occupational stress, in 33. Among mediators, work-life balance was the most examined, in 33 studies, followed by job satisfaction in 20, while emotional intelligence and recovery experiences were each examined in only one study. Psychological well-being was the most frequently studied outcome, appearing in 43 studies, ahead of burnout and exhaustion in 23, anxiety and depression in 22, physiological consequences in 14, job performance in 13 and turnover intention in 11.

Methodologically, the corpus is dominated by quantitative survey designs, which account for 51 studies, or 60.7 percent. Longitudinal quantitative designs account for eight studies, or 9.5 percent, systematic reviews and meta-analyses for seven, and mixed methods for eight, while experimental designs are rare at 4.8 percent. Moderation was tested in only 18 studies, fewer than the 24 that tested mediation, which the authors say limits firm conclusions. The cross-sectional dominance, they note, precludes causal inference and raises the risk of common-method bias, and because the review is a narrative synthesis rather than a meta-analysis, effect sizes were not pooled.

The review’s integrated conceptual framework, guided by Conservation of Resources theory, links antecedents such as work demands, family demands, organisational culture and individual characteristics to proximal stressors, namely work-family conflict and occupational stress, which in turn predict outcomes through mediators including work-life balance, job satisfaction, emotional intelligence and recovery experiences. Moderators include a gender-equity organisational climate, social support and personal resources, as well as the cross-cutting context of the pandemic and remote or hybrid work, which the review says intensified care burdens and blurred work-home boundaries. The framework separates proximal stressors from distal antecedents and mediators to clarify construct roles that the literature often uses interchangeably.

On practical implications, the authors report that supervisor training in family-supportive behaviours is consistently associated with lower work-family conflict and higher well-being, that flexible work policies work best when supported by explicit anti-presenteeism norms, and that cognitive-behavioural and mindfulness interventions can support individual well-being but should not replace structural interventions tackling workload equity, gender pay gaps and career progression. The future research agenda calls for intersectional and feminist institutional lenses, more studies in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Central Asia, life-stage-specific designs covering menopause and career re-entry, and attention to gig and precarious workers, none of whom are explicitly mentioned in the 84 studies. The authors also flag limitations of their own review, including reliance on a single database, English-language restrictions, a conservative title-level screening filter with an estimated false-negative rate of 10 to 15 percent, and the interpretive nature of TCCM classification, and they recommend an update by 2027 or 2028 given the field’s rapid growth.

Subject of Research: A systematic literature review of research on women's workplace mental health from 2006 to 2026

Article Title: Women and workplace mental health: a systematic literature review and future research agenda

Article References: Krishnan, C., & Sahdev, S. L. (2026). Women and workplace mental health: a systematic literature review and future research agenda. Future Business Journal, 12(1), Article 324. https://doi.org/10.1186/s43093-026-01029-8

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s43093-026-01029-8

Keywords: women, workplace mental health, work-family conflict, burnout, systematic review, occupational stress, work-life balance, Conservation of Resources theory, cross-sectional studies, research agenda, workplace, mental