Mental health is a state of well-being in which an individual realizes his or her own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a meaningful contribution to their community.
Mental health is a critical component of individual, family, community and national wellbeing and prosperity.
Women with careers outside the home often have to juggle their personal and their professional responsibilities and may struggle with work family conflicts than can affect their mental wellbeing.
The multiple roles that women juggle
Women are an integral part of families, communities and workplaces. Women play vital roles as daughters, sisters, wives and partners, organisers and coordinators, educators, caregivers, leaders and change-makers.
Women wear many hats and juggle many responsibilities.
This can be challenging and fulfilling but can also come at a cost to mental wellbeing and a sense of peace and stability.
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- How many hats do you wear?
- How many people are you responsible for?
- What responsibilities are you juggling?
- Are there personal or professional roles you feel are constantly in conflict?
- Do you often find yourself having to choose either family responsibilities or work responsibilities?
- Do you feel out of balance?
- Do you feel overwhelmed or stretched thin?
Work-life balance versus work-life integration
The interactions between our personal and our professional lives can be difficult to manage. Forming and managing the boundaries between ‘work’ and ‘life’ can be difficult.
There are many approaches to forming and to managing these boundaries including work-life balance and work-life integration.
Work-life balance focuses more on segregation, finding, equilibrium, equality and steadiness. Work-life integration focuses more on uniting, making whole, finding interlinks and connection between personal and professional responsibilities
While both are valid ways to managing personal and professional responsibilities, work-life integration has some advantages including:
— Flexible sometimes synergistic interactions between personal and professional responsibilities
— Variable attention as required by either personal or professional responsibilities
— Emphasis on flexibility and responsiveness towards either personal or professional responsibilities depending on the situation
— Empowerment, self-discipline and self-management
— Allowing for some violations on the boundaries between personal and professional boundaries without too much stress
— Amenability to remote and hybrid work settings
How can we support women to have better work-life integration for better mental wellbeing
- Encourage self-awareness and understanding of who one is and what one wants of their life
- Encouraging women to seek to live a meaningful life both personally and professionally
- Evaluating and responding to the work-life needs of female employees
- Creating flexible systems, performance/outcome-based measures of work
- Supporting or subsidising child-care through in house facilities
- Supporting sufficient maternity leave and flexible return to work policies
- Respecting the whole individual. Women are more than their titles or their job descriptions. Most women are juggling several, sometimes, heavy responsibilities in addition to their defined job descriptions
If you think that you or a woman that you know may be experiencing a mental health problem, please contact your nearest health care provider and get help.
*Dr Chido Rwafa-Madzvamutse is a consultant psychiatrist. Feedback: WhatsApp: +263777727332
