Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Women's mental health in India unfolds across a life course marked by persistent social stress and a disproportionate burden of unpaid care work. This article synthesises evidence on how gendered role expectations, domestic responsibility, and caregiving demands accumulate from adolescence through old age to shape women's psychological wellbeing. Drawing on Pearlin's stress process model and a life-course epidemiological perspective, the article traces four broad stages: adolescence and early socialisation, marriage and motherhood, mid-life employment and multigenerational caregiving, and old age and widowhood. Evidence reviewed indicates that unpaid domestic and care labour is consistently associated with poorer mental health among women relative to men, that postpartum depression affects a substantial minority of Indian mothers, and that widowed and socially isolated older women face markedly elevated depression risk. Structural factors — patriarchal norms, restricted autonomy, limited institutional childcare and eldercare, and weak social protection — mediate these associations throughout the life course. The article argues that fragmented, single-stage interventions are insufficient and that a life-course, gender-responsive framework is needed to guide mental health policy, workplace reform, and the recognition and redistribution of unpaid care work in India. Implications for higher education, public health practice, and national policy are discussed, along with limitations of the existing evidence base and directions for future life-course research on women's mental health in India.
Author: Dr. Pradeep Kumar Lenka
Institution: Veer Narmad South Gujarat University
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7221060479