Abstract
Positive Psychology Interventions (PPIs) have been increasingly used to support women’s well-being across work, health, caregiving, and community contexts. While a growing body of evidence indicates short-term improvements in outcomes like stress, happiness, and resilience, not much attention has been given to how these interventions function within women’s gendered life conditions. This narrative review synthesises empirical studies from 2015 to 2026. It examines the psychological mechanisms by which PPIs operate for women and contextual elements that affect their efficacy. Drawing on studies ranging from clinical, occupational, reproductive, and community settings, the review points out recurring mechanisms like psychological flexibility, positive affect, meaning-making, self-compassion, strengths-based agency, and emotion regulation. These processes are often mutually reinforcing and rarely operate in isolation. However, their significance and sustainability vary by life context, such as chronic stress, caregiving demands, illness, and constrained autonomy. The review highlights prolonged conceptual gaps in the literature. The literature fixates on individualistic emphasis on well-being, minimal gender theory integration, reliance on inferred rather than confirmed mechanisms, and very little attention on intersectionality or sexual diversity. Although PPIs reliably build on individual psychological resources, they ignore the structural, organizational, and relational conditions. The review proposes a context-sensitive conceptual framework that integrates psychological mechanisms with gendered relational and structural conditions. It argues that while PPIs strengthen individual psychological resources, their potential to bring in a change depends on integration with organizational and policy-level change.
Keywords: Women’s well-being, Gendered contexts, Meaning-making, Self-Compassion