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Organizational researchers studying well-being – as well as organizations themselves – often place much of the burden on employees to manage and preserve their own well-being. Missing from this discussion is how – from a human resources management (HRM) perspective – organizations and managers can directly and positively shape the well-being of their employees. The authors use this review to paint a picture of what organizations could be like if they valued people holistically and embraced the full experience of employees’ lives to promote well-being at work. In so doing, the authors tackle five challenges that managers may have to help their employees navigate, but to date have received more limited empirical and theoretical attention from an HRM perspective: (1) recovery at work; (2) women’s health; (3) concealable stigmas; (4) caregiving; and (5) coping with socio-environmental jolts. In each section, the authors highlight how past research has treated managerial or organizational support on these topics, and pave the way for where research needs to advance from an HRM perspective. The authors conclude with ideas for tackling these issues methodologically and analytically, highlighting ways to recruit and support more vulnerable samples that are encapsulated within these topics, as well as analytic approaches to study employee experiences more holistically. In sum, this review represents a call for organizations to now – more than ever – build thriving organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the perceptions of married couples regarding women’s autonomy and the association of these perceptions with the subjective well-being of wives in Lao PDR.

The study was conducted in semi-urban communities in Vientiane Capital of Lao PDR. Data were collected from 198 matched married couples with children under 12 years of age. Cross-tabulation analysis and multivariate regression analysis were used to assess the association between couple’s perceptions regarding women’s autonomy and the subjective well-being of wives.

Results from regression analysis revealed a positive association between the self-reported autonomy of wives and their subjective well-being. In contrast, neither the husband’s perceptions nor the couple’s concordance regarding the autonomy of the wife was associated with the level of the wife’s subjective well-being.

The survey was conducted in four small communities in Vientiane Capital. Thus, larger and more representative studies covering the entire country would be preferable for future policy orientation.

The study sites belong to the Lao-Lum group, which follows a matrilineal inheritance system under which wives generally enjoy a relatively higher social status than do women elsewhere in the world. The findings suggest that, even in women-centered settings, interventions aimed at increasing a woman’s perception of her household decision-making autonomy can improve her subjective well-being.

How does women's labour market disconnection impact on health and well‐being? The paper seeks to explain how economic isolation can cause low self esteem for women. Neighbourhood analysis provides the opportunity to explore some of the operational contradictions in public policy and how they are experienced in regeneration areas.

Local dynamics of employment and health are examined in neighbourhoods in two UK cities. The research draws on focus group data involving local women as well as interviews with representatives of statutory and voluntary organisations. Examination of relevant statistical data supports the evidence base on women's well‐being in these regeneration areas.

By analysing labour market characteristics and local women's experiences, depression and low esteem in relation to low incomes, barriers to employment and discrimination emerge as particularly important aspects of well‐being. The paper suggests that policy makers often fail to make the connections between women's marginalisation from the labour market and the causes of persistently high levels of poor health.

Policy implications suggest that public agencies seeking to promote economic sustainability need to consider health issues along with other neighbourhood characteristics as part of a holistic approach to labour market activation.

The originality lies in engagement with several areas of public management practice aimed at addressing poverty and improving community well‐being. By exploring issues of economic inactivity, employability and ill health among women the findings help inform policies seeking to address problems of worklessness in local neighbourhoods.

The purpose of this paper is to expand our understanding about the way women shape their career decisions during their transition to motherhood, through the exploration process, its facilitating factors and outcomes.

A longitudinal, quantitative method was used to investigate the vocational and maternal exploration processes. Workplace, spousal and family support served as facilitating factors, and vocational decisions and well-being as outcomes. Participants were 326 Israeli women during their transition to motherhood.

SEM analysis revealed a good model fit to the data. Workplace support had a positive effect on maternal exploration. Increased maternal exploration was positively associated with keeping working patterns before motherhood, and negatively associated with well-being.

The sample of the current study was limited to highly educated Israeli working women.

The results of the current study can serve career counselors policymakers and organizations in their efforts to encourage first-time mothers to retain their paid work patterns by supporting maternal exploration through creating family-friendly policies.

The current findings have demonstrated that social support factors contribute to the enhancement of the exploration process also in later developmental stages. Furthermore, these findings showed differential effects of managerial support on maternal exploration and vocational exploration.

As rural nonfarm activities grow in developing countries, less attention is being paid to the opportunities they may provide for women. The purpose of this study is to examine the gender-differentiated impact of nonfarm diversification strategies in rural Senegal.

This study uses data collected from the Senegalese poverty monitoring survey and employs an instrumental variable (IV) approach and a multinomial endogenous treatment model to investigate the extent to which diversification strategies lead to improved outcomes for rural women and their households.

While nonfarm diversification is a male-dominated livelihood strategy, rural women make the most of it, regardless of whether they diversify into low- or high-return nonfarm activities. At the individual level, diversification improves rural women’s well-being through large income-increasing effects and higher empowerment but has no effect on rural men’s well-being. At the household level, the authors find that, when only women diversify, households have lower per capita income but are less likely to be food insecure than when only men or both genders diversify.

This study is based on cross-sectional data, making it impossible to examine the dynamic effects of nonfarm diversification strategies on well-being outcomes.

This study contributes to the current literature on rural livelihood diversification. While much attention has been paid to the feminization of agriculture, remarkably little is known about the expanding role of rural women in the nonfarm sector.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the health and well-being of Thai immigrant women in transnational marriages.

Interviews with 13 Thai women living in Norway who have (had) a Norwegian spouse/partner were conducted and the transcripts were analysed using thematic analysis.

Initial culture shock and a mixture of employment issues, transnational ties, marital relationships and social networks intertwined to influence women’s health and well-being over time. Sending financial remittances to family in Thailand could be challenging due to struggles to obtain suitable employment, working in low-paid physical jobs and spouses’ lack of understanding of this cultural practice. Over time, these intertwined factors led to chronic stress and deteriorating health for some. Thai networks and friendships were important for emotional and practical support.

More organised assistance may be beneficial to facilitate integration, reduce social isolation and improve employment opportunities.

Research on Thai women has so far focused on their position as immigrant wives and the vulnerabilities to exploitation and abuse they face. Focusing on only discourses around marital relationships may be limiting when trying to understand factors that influence the health and well-being of Thai immigrant women.

This paper poses the question of whether the mainstream feminist movement in the United States, in concentrating its efforts on achieving gender parity in the existing workplace, is selling women short. In it, I argue that contemporary U.S. feminism has not adequately theorized the problems with the relatively unregulated market system in the United States. That failure has contributed to a situation in which women’s participation in the labor market is mistakenly equated with liberation, and in which other far-ranging effects of the market system on women’s lives inside and outside of work – many of them negative – are overlooked. To theorize the effects of the market system on women’s lives in a more nuanced manner, I borrow from the insights of earlier Marxist and socialist feminists. I then use this more nuanced perspective to outline an agenda for feminism, which I call “market-cautious feminism,” that seeks to regulate the market to serve women’s interests.

Building on the content of papers of this volume, this final section asks the key question of whether, after prolonged discussions undertaken for almost half of the century by major world-scale institutions and numerous governments, gender equality is found in todays’ countries, communities, and families across the world. It attempts to delineate whether some researchers are correct stating that great gender equality across the world was achieved since the 1970s at job opportunities, family relations, education, and social position of women in comparison to men. Or whether others are correct showing that women contribute significantly more time to working hours and perform more societal duties while spending less time on rest than men. Finally, whether governments and policy makers created gender-sensitive policies and programs that aim at enhancement and protection of women’s rights, economic empowerment and improvement of women’s well-being, and hence citizens of the global world embrace gender equality in everyday practices. In conclusion, we propose potential policies that could build a better, more equal world for future generations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of microcredit on women’s empowerment in rural Bangladesh using the latest primary data.

Primary data have been collected by a household survey in the four districts of Bangladesh. Logistic regression is used to estimate the odd of improving women empowerment after participating in microfinance.

The results show positive impacts of microfinance on most of the selected indicators for women’s empowerment.

Lack of control groups and baseline data are the main limitation of this research. Future research can address this issue by selecting institutions with baseline data or control groups.

The findings of the study can help policy makers to adopt appropriate policies that integrate empowerment in development projects with women.

The results of this research could encourage more women to participate in microfinance activities and development projects.

This research provides the most updated data from a primary survey in Bangladesh. The authors also mitigate the possible selection biases by using a fixed-effects estimator.

The unstoppable and exponential growth of social media use has given rise to concerns about the consequent effects on users. Among the major concerns are the psychological consequences, which have received considerable academic attention. The current mixed-methods research aims to examine women's social media use and its effects on their psychological well-being in a patriarchal culture, namely Pakistan.

This study employs a mixed-method research methodology. The quantitative section collected data from 240 women and used structural equation modelling to test the proposed hypotheses. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the in-depth interviews with ten women.

The integration of the findings revealed increased use of social media by women and its beneficial effects (communication and socialisation, escapism and self-presentation), though qualitative findings revealed the cultural implications and obstacles that women face (online anonymity and digital asylum). The study calls attention to women's social media usage patterns and the resulting effects on women's psychological well-being in a low-income country with a patriarchal social structure.

Most research remains limited to Western societies and young populations. The situation is somewhat different in developing economies with traditionally preserved cultures compared to Western societies. This study uniquely examines the influence of social media on psychological well-being in a developing country with a special cultural context.