Strategies for Work-Life Integration and Their Impact on Wellbeing among Early Career Female Faculty

This paper explores the way women faculty members in their early career balance work and life and how these mechanisms affect their wellbeing in modern academic settings. Using a convergent mixed-method design, the study is a combination of the quantitative survey data (200) and the qualitative interview data (20). It has been shown that the most notable predictors of wellbeing are temporal and behavioural aspects, including setting regular working hours, communicating less after-hours and engaging in digital detachment, which explains 42% of the wellbeing variance. On the other hand, spatial and communicative boundaries are not as strong, yet they have a lesser impact because of hybrid work practices and expectation of being available at all times. Qualitative insights also make it clear that there are four common themes that include temporal guarding, space blurring, behavioural detachment, and communicative negotiation. The combination of these findings proves that wellbeing is maintained when the faculty has agency over time and behaviour and is compromised when organizational cultures glorify overwork and accessibility. The paper highlights that institutional reforms to accompany those individual strategies should include the policies of flexible workloads, gender-related wellbeing interventions, and leadership that respects boundaries in order to create sustainable academic careers. This study, by putting the boundary management issue into context of gender academic arrangements, brings in the idea of boundary theory and job demands resource model besides providing practical implications to policy and practice.