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Abstract
Working women in India increasingly occupy professional roles while continuing to carry substantial responsibility for household coordination, caregiving, and relational work. Existing research has documented work-family conflict, occupational strain, resilience, and organizational support, yet these streams are often examined separately or reduced to individual coping. This conceptual article develops a multilevel resource framework for understanding psychological well-being among working women through the integration of Conservation of Resources theory, the Transactional Model of Stress and Coping, Job Demands-Resources theory, resilience perspectives, and positive psychology. The framework proposes that work-life integration is best understood as an ongoing process of resource negotiation across professional and family domains. It identifies invisible coordination, boundary permeability, cumulative psychological strain, coping and micro-recovery, resilience and restored control, and relational and organizational buffering as interconnected processes shaping sustainable psychological well-being. The article further distinguishes available support from enacted support and task sharing from responsibility sharing, and introduces boundary agency as the practical capacity to set, negotiate, and maintain workable limits across roles. A multilevel intervention architecture is proposed across individual, family, managerial, and organizational levels. The framework contributes a context-sensitive account of work-life integration that moves beyond asking women to become more resilient and instead locates well-being within interacting systems of demands, resources, relationships, and institutional practices
References
References
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