Balancing extensive ambition and a context overflowing with opportunities and demands: A grounded theory on stress and recovery among highly educated working young women entering male-dominated occupational areas

Abstract

Several factors underline the issue of stress-related health among young highly educated women. Major societal changes might provide more new challenges with considerably changed and expanded roles than were expected by earlier generations, especially among women. The quantity of young women with higher education has also increased threefold in Sweden in less than two decades and there are a growing number of young women that hereby break with traditional gender positions and enter new occupational areas traditionally dominated by men. The research questions in the present study were: “What is the main concern, regarding stress and recovery, among young highly educated working women breaking with traditional gender positions and entering male-dominated occupational areas?” and “How do they handle this concern?” We conducted open-ended interviews with 20 informants, aged 23-29 years. The results showed that the synergy between highly ambitious individuals and a context overflowing with opportunities and demands ended up in the informants’ constantly striving to find a balance in daily life (main concern). This concern refers to the respondents experiencing a constant overload of ambiguity and that they easily became entangled in a loop of stress and dysfunctional coping behavior, threatening the balance between stress and sufficient recovery. In order to handle this concern, the respondents used different strategies in balancing extensive ambition and a context overflowing with opportunities and demands (core category). This preliminary theoretical model deepens our understanding of how the increasing numbers of highly educated young women face complex living conditions endangering their possibility of maintaining health and work ability.

The prevalence of mental health problems among young adult women has increased dramatically in recent decades in Sweden, and is considerably higher than that of young men (Statistics Sweden, 2009; Swedish Ministry of Education Research and Culture, 2006). As life-course models postulate that various health problems in early years predict future morbidity (Kuh, Ben-Shlomo, Lynch, Hallqvist, & Power, 2003), a critical challenge for attaining sustainable societies is maintaining good health and work ability among young people. This challenge is particularly pressing as most western countries are facing an impending lack of labor because of ageing populations (Lisiankova & Wright, 2005).

Although mental health problems are generally more prevalent in populations with less education (Fryers, Melzer, Jenkins, & Brugha, 2005), several factors underline the issue of stress-related health problems among the growing number of young highly educated women. In Sweden, the relative increase in long-term sick leave among young highly educated women has been substantial (Renstig & Sandmark, 2005) and highly educated women have a higher prevalence of sickness absence than highly educated men (Hildingsson & Ljunglöf, 2009; Krantz & Lundberg, 2006). The significance of work-related disability among highly educated young women was also recently highlighted in a Dutch study (Verdonk, de Rijk, Klinge, & de Vries, 2008) where the highest prevalence of work-related fatigue was recently found among highly educated women (Verdonk, Hooftman, van Veldhoven, Boelens, & Koppes, 2010, p. 631). Additionally, active jobs (i.e., high demands and high control) have been observed to be a risk factor for long-term sick leave among women as opposed to men, especially in the private sector (Lidwall & Marklund, 2006). The described situation is of particular and growing importance as the quantity of young women with higher education has increased three-fold in Sweden in less than two decades, and in 2007 there were 40% of women aged 25-34 years that had at least a three-year university education (Statistics Sweden, 2009). Hence, an increasing number of young women today can break with traditional gender positions and enter new occupational areas traditionally dominated by men (Statistics Sweden, 2009), a situation that might bring about specific gender-related exposures for women (Bergman & Hallberg, 1997; Thilmany, 2008).

Western societies have undergone major changes in recent decades, changes suggested to bring about new potential health hazards partly overlooked in current epidemiology (Eckersley, 2006). According to leading sociologists, these changes have emphasized individualism, self-fulfillment, a heighted sense of uncertainty, and a rise in personal expectations (Bauman, 2002; Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 2002; Furlong & Cartmel, 1997). Modern working life even increasingly emphasizes individual flexibility. This situation could contribute to increased work satisfaction (Costa, Sartori, & Akerstedt, 2006), though it has also been seen as a “double-edged sword” associated with reduced individual control of work time and performance (MacEachen, Polzer, & Clarke, 2008). These societal changes are particularly evident in the lives of women, who face more new challenges than do men (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 2002). For example, instead of simply abandoning traditional gender positions, women now combine them with more self-actualizing roles (Aveling, 2002; Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 2002). As the transition from adolescence to adulthood is itself a period when role conflicts and uncertainties can be highly stressful and difficult to manage, this new societal context might be especially hard for young people to manage. Moreover, a de-standardization of this period has been observed in which the transition to adulthood has become not only prolonged but also more fragmented, more diversified, and less linear (Walther & Plug, 2006).

Today, there is no all-embracing consensus as to the definition of stress. According to Ursin and Eriksen (2004) the term “stress” refers to four different factors that can be measured separately: (1) stress stimuli, (2) stress experience, (3) a non-specific, general stress response, and (4) feedback from the stress response (Ursin & Eriksen, 2004). An important aspect of this division is the emphasis on how a stimulus is filtered through individual cognitive appraisal, i.e., stress experience according to Ursin and Eriksen. If a particular stimulus or set of stimuli is appraised as threatening, the result is a stress response that activates the body, mobilizing physiological resources to initiate and improve performance. This arousal will then be sustained until the reason for it is eliminated (Ursin & Eriksen, 2004). This physiological activation can also be seen as a bodily adaptation process with the objective of maintaining the body's balance (McEwen, 1998). It is important to note that stress per se does not immediately threaten health; on the contrary, it is a positive and vital response that facilitates the handling of threats and challenges (Ursin & Eriksen, 2004). However, a sustained high level of arousal can have detrimental effect on both psychological and physiological functioning, as it might both increase susceptibility to other health hazards and be directly pathogenic. In this way stress needs to be balanced or reduced by sufficient recovery or it will contribute to health problems (McEwen, 2008). If the environment is appraised as taxing or exceeding a person's resources, coping is the process of constantly changing cognitive and behavioral efforts to manage these internal or external demands (Lazarus, 1984, p. 513). Because the experience of stress is a product of both environmental conditions and individual appraisal and coping, new environmental conditions might provide new potential stress stimuli as well as obstacles to attaining sufficient recovery. Based on such changes, it has been suggested that our knowledge of how young women perceive these new living and working conditions in terms of stress and coping is inadequate, and a special need for qualitative studies has been emphasized (Hildingh, Luepker, Baigi, & Lidell, 2006). To that end, the research questions in the present study were “What is the main concern, regarding stress and recovery, among young highly educated working women breaking with traditional gender positions and entering male-dominated occupational areas?” and “How do they handle this concern?”

Method

Design and setting

Our point of departure was grounded theory (GT) (Charmaz, 2006; Glaser & Strauss, 1967). One aim of GT is to generate hypotheses, theories, and tentative models based on an empirical ground. This approach was chosen because the observed societal changes (e.g., individualization) in combination with the de-standardization and prolongation of the transition to adulthood might have generated new living conditions that impinge on stress and recovery for young adult women. This might also be particularly manifested among the growing number of young highly educated women moving into traditionally male-dominated occupations. The present study was carried out in one of Sweden's largest cities as stress among young people has been found to be especially pronounced in urban settings (Swedish Ministry of Education Research and Culture, 2006).

Participants and data collection

Sampling was conducted in three steps. First, to provide the best answer to the research question (i.e., fit), our study group was chosen according to four criteria: (a) high educational level, (b) working at least halftime, (c) no children, and (d) not in traditional women's occupations (e.g., care giving and education). Women with children were excluded as the mean age of having one's first child in Sweden is 29 (Statistics Sweden, 2009), and having children would certainly greatly affect the participants’ living conditions in a way that was not the primary target of this study. Second, maximizing the variation of data or incidents through strategic sampling resulted in participants from five different occupational fields, i.e., company lawyers, physicians, economists, engineers, and architects. All these occupational fields are traditionally dominated by men in Sweden, but are currently being entered by an increasing number of young women. A misunderstanding resulted in the recruitment of one participant, a human resources manager, not meeting the above criteria. However, she worked in an industrial setting and as her interview contributed rich descriptions corresponding to the emerging categories, these data were included in the analysis. To maximize data variation, the initial recruitment process used three routes: (1) the researchers contacted key people in relevant workplaces, who in turn distributed contact information and information on the study; (2) based on recommendations from people who had heard about the study, potential participants who met the study's criteria were contacted directly and given information on the study; and (3) after a few interviews had been conducted, snowball sampling was applied (both for variation and to enter more deeply into issues). The distributed information included a study description, confidentiality assurance, and contact information. Third, as the analysis developed, decisions regarding ongoing data collection were based on the emerging theory as a property of theoretical sampling.

We interviewed 20 highly educated and fully employed women between 23 and 29 years old. Having a certain stress level was not a criterion in the strategic sampling, and the interviewer judged that the stress level varied considerably between informants. According to the ideas of grounded theory, we started by “casting the net” very wide, beginning the interviews with, “Tell me about sources of stress in your life.” From the responses to this, ideas emerged as to what to ask next in the interview, for example, “Could you describe how you experience these stressful periods?” and “Tell me how you handle the relationship between stress and recovery in these situations.” More specific questions for use in later interviews emerged from the analysis, for example about postponing health and balance between work and private life. This procedure was also a property of theoretical sampling, i.e., that emerging results guide where to go and what to ask next (Glaser, 1978). The interviews were audio recorded and field notes were taken to document reactions and observations that could reveal contextual dimensions of the interviews. All interviews were carried out face-to-face by the first author and lasted up to 90 minutes.

Data analysis

According to grounded theory, data collection and analysis occur simultaneously. The analysis was conducted in two hierarchical steps. First, after each of the first eight interviews, the recordings were transcribed verbatim and analyzed line by line together with the field notes. This open coding was based on the central research questions of the study and generated short codes close to the data. Keeping the initial open codes very close to the data served to counteract any effects potentially arising from researcher preconceptions. The later interviews were analyzed in an analogous process using field notes and careful listening to the audio recordings (the selective coding resulted in various passages being transcribed even from later interviews). Questions such as “What is actually happening in the data?” and “What does the informant do?” were put to the data and the initial codes were constantly compared with each other and with the data. These comparisons sequentially generated categories, which in turn were compared with each other and with the open codes. In this process of constant comparisons (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), categories were identified, labeled, and defined. Eventually, one category was identified as the core category, exceedingly central to the data and to the emerging conceptual framework. Once the core category had emerged, the next step in the hierarchical coding process started and a more focused or selective coding was carried out. This coding was delimited to codes linked to the core category. At this point, our selections were guided by theoretical sampling, which means that emerging results guide where to go and what to ask the next informant in order to saturate categories. Several indicators of saturation were noted already after 16 interviews, i.e., high replication of data connected with the emerging categories and verification of incidents and features by several participants (Morse & Richards, 2002). However, to challenge the emerging categories, another four interviews were conducted and analyzed. Because the data from these interviews did not contribute to any new qualities or properties of the core category, saturation was judged to have occurred. Theoretical and detailed memos in the form of text and figures were created throughout the analytical process. These memos recorded ideas, presumed associations, and theoretical reflections related to each of the emerging categories. The first author conducted the initial open coding, whereas the process of ongoing comparison and selective coding was conducted together with and in consultation with the third author. Throughout the process, the authors tried to maintain theoretical sensitivity by continuously reflecting on and discussing the emerging results in relation to personal and professional experiences and familiarity with the relevant literature. As this process might raise the risk of emerging results mirroring the personal qualities of the researchers (Hall & Callery, 2001), the authors endeavored to discuss any possible prejudices and pre-understandings that could influence the analytical process. The core category was generated from patterns that were clearly repeated across the data. Quotations were first translated by the authors, then sent to a professional translator together with the original Swedish text, and finally edited by the authors so as best to capture the actual utterances of the participants.

Ethical considerations

The study design was approved by the Research Ethics Committee at the University of Gothenburg (Dnr: 144-08). Requirements concerning informed consent and de-identification of results were met. All participants signed written consent forms to participate in the study before being interviewed.

Results

A preliminary theoretical model was generated, describing how the women handled their main concern regarding stress and recovery. According to the data, the women's main concern was constantly striving to find a balance in daily life. It refers to excessive uncertainty in diverse dimensions of life and describes how the respondents were constantly experiencing ambiguity overload. This describes how existential ambiguity, everyday ambiguity, and ambiguity in estimating what is “good enough” altogether resulted in an overload of continuous evaluation and decision making, which sequentially lead to stress. In their striving to find balance in daily life the informants easily became entangled in a negative loop of stress and dysfunctional coping behavior characterized by: taking on too much, comparing and normalizing, and postponing health. Sequentially, this loop endangered the balance between stress and sufficient recovery.

Foremost, the women's striving to find a balance in daily life was the consequence of a synergy between extensive individual ambition and a context overflowing with opportunities and demands. Extensive individual ambition comprised high enthusiastic drive and high performance striving. A context overflowing with opportunities and demands comprised the combined effect of gender-based structures, lack of boundaries, numerous opportunities, and performance-focused surroundings. Hence, the forces leading to the concern of finding a balance in daily life resulted from neither individually ambitious young women alone nor a context overflowing with opportunities and demands; rather, it was the combination of these two dimensions.

In order to find a balance in daily life the women tried balancing extensive ambition and a context overflowing with opportunities and demands (core category) by using different strategies. These strategies were focused on setting individual boundaries, leaning against contextual boundaries, and buffering stress through exercise (see Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Balancing extensive ambition and a context overflowing with opportunities and demands.

To find a balance in daily life (main concern)

The informants’ main concern regarding stress and recovery was to find a balance in daily life. This main concern comprises how the respondents were constantly experiencing ambiguity overload, and that they easily got entangled in a loop of stress and dysfunctional coping behavior characterized by: taking on too much, comparing and normalizing, and postponing health.

Experiencing ambiguity overload

This comprises three closely inter-related properties that often co-existed in everyday life: existential ambiguity, everyday ambiguity, and ambiguity in estimating what is “good enough.” The cumulative effect of these dimensions was stress and a situation in which ambiguity, in the form of extensive uncertainty in the face of ongoing evaluations and decision making, was a constantly present and forceful element in informants’ lives: “I think an incredible amount…my brain is sort of really wound up a great deal of the time.”

The existential property of ambiguity overload reflected how thoughts about major life choices gave rise to substantial ambiguity. Uncertainty also arose from not knowing what choices would actually lead to preferred outcomes. This caused individuals to reflect intensely on what kinds of lives they really wanted, whom to be, and others’ expectations. A quest for the “right choices” frequently occurred, bringing about a latent sense of anxiety about choices made: “For every choice you make it feels like there is an endless row of choices that you, yes, doors that you closed.”

Ambiguity was also very present, even in everyday life situations. Constant daily reflections over (1) what the informants really wanted to do, (2) what they had to do, (3) things that would be strategic if they did them, (4) how they should do these things, and (5) evaluations of previous actions, all accumulated into a daily background drone of energy-sapping thoughts and uncertainty. For example:

Either I don't bother to invite them or socialize with them because I feel that “God, I really don't have the energy” and then I feel bad about it. But if I do it—you want to do so much and then you give up other things and feel bad about that instead…so you really never get rid of the guilt; even if it is just about enjoyable things, there is always something to feel guilty about doing, not have done, things you would rather do instead of the things you actually do on a given day.

The intensity and combination of these reflections led to an almost chronic perceived lack of time in relation to all the things that could and needed to be done. This lack of time was often exacerbated by work, which demanded a great amount of time, causing informants to squeeze in as many activities as possible during actual time off:

Even when I don't work a hell of a lot I see too that…there is no space for spontaneity or to just sit at home breathing cause there are always things happening after work and on the weekends, going away and kind of maximizing the time so that you keep up with everything.

There was also an ambiguity in estimating what was “good enough.” The informants found it very hard to know where to draw the line and be satisfied with one's performance. This applied to both private and work life, rendering considerable anxiety and stress. Setting the limits as to what was “good enough” was partly related to specific tasks:

I become unsure about whether I am good enough, if I am capable in this situation, sort of…if I do this ok…You get anxious, this grinding feeling of “am I really good?”

Informants also doubted whether their identities were “good enough” in evaluating themselves as people or in terms of their competence. Several informants clearly stated that they needed additional help from managers in setting more defined objectives against which to evaluate themselves:

They [i.e., the managers] are not necessarily dissatisfied with me, but I have not received that confirmation either…showing that they are satisfied, and then you get, or at least I get, unsure about whether I am performing well enough.

Informants working under extreme time pressure were also frustrated that because of constant high workload and lack of time performing “good enough” felt unachievable according to their own standards.

Taking on too much

The informants considered themselves as continuously taking on too much in relation to their perceived recovery. The reasons for this were both striving for performance but also enthusiasm in synergy with the contextual factors: “In the vast majority of cases it is because they are pleasurable things. I don't want to miss anything fun.” Because the informants themselves were the ones taking on too much, it was hard for them to recognize contextual influences on their behavior. Consequently, they saw it as up to themselves alone to change their situations:

I easily jump into things all the time and take on more and more and more, and in the end you do so many things that the calendar is completely booked for weeks ahead. So I easily put myself in situations in which it is very, very busy and very, very intense all the time.

Comparing and normalizing

The informants described an endless stream of external references against which to compare themselves, governing, for example, how to perform, how to look, and what possessions to acquire. Hence, the quantity of external references, in combination with the possibility of always finding references that made one's own performance, looks, etc. appear unsatisfactory, resulted in a constant stream of perceived demands:

There should be a certain material standard. You should be happy, like a nuclear family. …You have to have time for so many things. You should have time to start a family and establish a career, but you should also have time to have a very extensive social life. You should have time to have many friends and spend time with them; you should have fun all the time as well. Then you should also do some traveling, that is good, everyone else does that.

Even though the informants were aware of the fallaciousness of this reasoning, their own high stress levels were regarded as normal because most people in their surroundings had the same elevated stress levels:

We try to gather everyone we can find, and then we get together [i.e., to form a female network]…but at the same time it becomes negative in that we normalize this stress and anxiety. That everyone experiences it—it becomes something normal in that way.

Postponing health

One's own health was often put aside in favor of high performance, fun or interesting activities, and a perceived responsibility for others: “You want to do a good job for others, and that means that you sometimes have to suffer a bit yourself.” This partly concerned acute situations in which the informants kept up their work performance, even though they felt ill enough to stay at home from work to recover. This also concerned wear and tear over time, i.e., believing that it was not healthy in the long run for stress and recovery to be imbalanced, but continued in any case without change. Instead, the informants reasoned that this situation would probably change itself in the future: “I think that this will sort itself out. It is just temporary.”

Balancing extensive ambition and a context overflowing with opportunities and demands (core category)

The informants were generally very aware of situations with too much stress in relation to received recovery, “I have to get to the bottom of this. Just lying here hyperventilating before I go to bed…it is maybe not a good idea to do that till I am 65.” However, despite this awareness, the informants often continued without making any changes. Yet, in order to handle this concern the respondents used different coping strategies: Setting individual boundaries, leaning against contextual boundaries, and buffering stress through exercise.

Setting individual boundaries

This was based on reflection, both internally and in ongoing dialogue with female colleagues and friends in similar situations. These dialogues concerned external boundaries like not taking on so many tasks and activities and saying no more often, but also internal boundaries like trying to be satisfied with not being perfect or performing flawlessly:

[Y]ou almost have to start setting boundaries…almost in a selfish way. I mean, you should please everyone…but you have to start,…or I have noticed that I have to start saying no. Even if it may hurt people and some people get surprised since they have counted on me in a specific situation. I have stopped calling people who is expecting me to call. Not for good and forever but…and I don't lend a hand with everything anymore. That is a big issue. That it is okay not being at the summit of one's power and pleasing everyone.

Leaning against contextual boundaries

This mainly concerns how formal boundaries at work helped them to manage this intricate situation of balancing extensive ambition and a context overflowing with opportunities and demands. Some managers explicitly explained their attitudes towards the relation between work and health: “If you can, avoid working over time. We want you to use your vacation, we want you to call in sick (when you're sick), because we do really want you to last.” However, there was widespread dissatisfaction with managers not providing better-defined goals, giving more feedback, or setting boundaries for work time and availability. Yet, contextual boundaries could also be provided by key persons outside work. Some informants appreciated that, when they could not do so themselves, family or friends helped them set essential boundaries:

[S]ometimes you get stuck in a behavior that is not really healthy and in that case it is good to have your close people who tell you that “now you have to calm down.”

Buffering stress through exercise

The respondents did not only try to balance their ambition and their living context by strategies focusing on the specific causes for their perceived stress. They also used exercise as a way of handling symptoms of stress:

The stomach is always affected physically (by stress) and then it affects the back and neck as well…I get tensed…I exercise to get rid of that, which is really satisfying to me. I love to exercise so that is a really good cure for me.

Yet, due to the perceived positive effect of exercise, this strategy could result in the avoidance of coping focused on the specific causes of stress “The more I work, and the more I get stressed, the more I also exercise.” Exercise was also used as a strategy of building up a buffer to become resilient in a longer perspective, “Anyway, it is an investment in the future, to feel good, and to feel good in the head and that.” However, due to their main concern to find a balance in daily life, exercise could easily turn into yet another demand:

Then you should…it's just because you know that you should exercise in order to feel better. Or I feel better then. And then you get stressed when you don't have enough time cause you know that “shit, now haven't exercised.” It becomes a mental thing that “shit, now I haven't exercised for a while, that's not good” and so on…and so on.

The concern to find a balance in daily life: a consequence of a synergy between individual and contextual forces

The concern to find a balance in daily life was a consequence of how the informants’ extensive individual ambition were constantly triggered and reinforced by a context overflowing with opportunities and demands. One informant described this situation as “It is hard to know exactly where the demands originate, from within, from each other, from the surroundings, from working life…media…anyhow, somewhere it all melts together.” This situation resulted in long periods of intense activity with few recovery opportunities.

Extensive individual ambition

The two dimensions that together led to extensive individual ambition were high enthusiastic drive and high performance striving.

High enthusiastic drive

High curiosity and an urge for challenges turned out to be important individual driving forces. The informants perceived that there were many fun and interesting things to do, both now and in the future: “I think that for me, stressful elements are mostly about me wanting to do a lot of things.” This driving force of ambition was originally perceived as very positive, but through an excessive load of positive activities in combination with a great many perceived demands, activities originally perceived as positive easily became yet more demands: “So it is actually something I enjoy doing, but it is nonetheless something that I have to do.”

Striving for high performance

The informants generally needed to perform well and maintain their identities as high-performing people. This need was often related to their self-esteem and feeling dissatisfied with their performance often resulted in negative outcomes such as stress, discontent, and negative thoughts about themselves, for example, when this informant commented on a missed opportunity to work out: “Then I can feel a bit stressed and dwell on it over and over again…I don't feel as capable. Then I feel lazy.” The informants gave various reasons for striving in this way. Some said that they had always had this drive and that their surroundings (e.g., family, friends, and school) had supported and encouraged it. Others claimed that it had not emerged before the extraordinarily performance-focused conditions at the university. Aspects of gender seemed to be a highly important factor in the formation of this striving, as some had been brought up by their parents to be “good, high-performing girl[s],” encouraged by the rationale that “a woman without an education does worse than a man without an education.” Even though some of the informants stated that they had domains in which performance did not feel as important (e.g., hobbies and family), on the whole this striving seemed to apply to many domains in life.

A context overflowing with opportunities and demands

Gender-based structures, lack of boundaries, numerous opportunities, and performance-focused surroundings formed a context literally overflowing with opportunities and demands. Altogether, these four dimensions resulted in living conditions that were very cumbersome to handle.

Gender-based structures

Gender turned out to exert a strong influence on the formation of the informants’ living contexts in terms of stress and recovery, both because the informants all faced male-dominated work environments and because of a perceived future conflict between one's career and having a family. The experiences and consequences of facing and handling male-dominated work environments had various manifestations. Although some informants were frequently exposed to sexist jokes and belittlement from colleagues and clients, most problems were more indefinite in nature such as being less listened to than male colleagues or decisions sometimes being made in informal networks to which women usually lacked access. These factors ultimately led to feelings of having to perform better than male colleagues to prove one's worth and competence. As well, this over-performance was also related to behaviors actually rewarded at work:

Neither I nor my female colleagues are as good [as the male colleagues] when it comes to saying “Look, I did that,” to blowing our own horns. And when you don't blow your own horn as well [as the men], your actual performance has to be better because you, you don't market your performance as well.

Even informants who had had no specific negative experiences working in male-dominated environments described experiences of over-performance because of worries of being seen as less capable because they were young women. This fear was often based on narratives describing the negative experiences of close friends and colleagues. One informant, who explicitly stated that she saw no negative consequences for herself as a young woman, later in the interview nevertheless stated:

I think I discipline myself a bit more. I think that you try to be a bit more professional in your manner and that you try to sound a bit more sure of your ground and that you try to adapt to their way of being…among men, and especially among men in higher managerial positions.

There were also experiences of being highly visible. Even though this visibility could start as something positive, it could end up becoming yet another demand: “There are a lot of people keeping their eyes on you, especially when you're young and a woman and you kind of have to perform well all the time.”

There was also a perceived conflict between having a career and having a family, partly due to worries about how to manage daily life given that time felt scarce even without children. These thoughts also included a fear of unevenly distributed homework in the future, in a relationship with a male partner. In fact, although none of the informants had children, unevenly distributed homework nonetheless seemed an issue of concern:

However you look at it, even though we buy housecleaning services, I perceive—he wouldn't agree though, but I perceive—that I do 75% of our household work and he does 25%. And I don't think that that will change if we have children…and I don't feel that it was different with previous boyfriends either.

Worries about future work-family conflict were especially pronounced in informants working in extreme gender-based hierarchies displaying little understanding of the possibility of combining work and children:

The firms want to market themselves with “here you'll get both leisure time and a good job” and they put in pictures of baby strollers and all that, but that is just such bullshit. Everyone knows that it is really tough having a family and working in a firm.

Therefore, the perceived option was to change occupational direction when deciding to have children.

Anxiety about the “biological clock” comprises worries about the biological complications of having children when older. This anxiety was mainly based on the several considerations that made young women delay having children, for example, the ambition to have a professional identity before having children. One informant commented that to avoid being “just a mother, you have to be something else first, [have] another identity first, and then you can be a mother.” One also had to find a life partner in time:

And you have to manage all that before you are biologically too old. You have to get a job first to be able to take parental leave, then it's good to have worked for some time…then it is good to have made your way up a bit [i.e., hierarchically]. …In other words, there are a whole lot of things you have to do before you can start a family…and you have to find a person to start a family with. …You have to have time for so much before that, and then when you have accomplished all those other things, and not until then, is it time, and it feels like…then you're damn old.

Lack of boundaries

A widespread lack of boundaries was experienced as very problematic: “the boundaries are floating around all the time.” This lack of boundaries partly arose from expectations from others being perceived as vague. At work, this vagueness concerned (1) what to do, (2) how to prioritize tasks, (3) how tasks should be carried out, and (4) to what level things should be carried out. Stress resulted both from ambiguity concerning whether they had lived up to others’ expectations (i.e., good enough) and from over-performance; that is, being sure to satisfy the expectations surrounding one:

This vagueness is part of both my private life and my work life, because as soon as it's not clear what is expected of me, either in my role as a girlfriend or cohabitant or as a friend or at work…like exactly what…not exactly what tasks I will do, but to have some idea of what I am expected to do. And when that is somewhat vague…or when it is completely vague, I feel that I have to over-perform.

One explanation for this extensive vagueness was that the managers were too overloaded with work themselves and in turn did not have enough energy or time to clearly define their expectations to their subordinates. Lack of boundaries also comprises the possibility of working very long hours without any formal limits. Although the possibility of working at home provided a sense of freedom, it also resulted in pressure from having endless opportunities to work and from being constantly available to clients and co-workers.

Numerous opportunities

The informants’ surroundings seemed to provide numerous opportunities. These opportunities concerned both what life-path to choose—“I could point out 10 possible ways that I could go in the coming 2 years, and all these ways go in different directions”—and choosing between a wide range of alternatives in everyday life. All these opportunities were mainly experienced as positive, but they could easily give rise to ambiguity concerning what decision would make the most out of one's chances and position: “I have such an enormous number of chances right now and opportunities, and I want to make the most of them, which should be an enjoyable thing…which it is…but it is also demanding.”

Performance-focused surroundings

Surroundings both at work and in private life were perceived as highly focused on performance and achievement: “Just because there are so many who are capable and ambitious, you have to be slightly more capable and slightly more ambitious to get somewhere.” These performance-focused surroundings had accompanied many of the informants from high school, through university, and to their present work environments. Some mentioned the near impossibility of not being affected:

It does not really help to study at the school of economics. There, everyone is trying to be perfect, by having the highest grades and best looks and in being active in the students’ union and all that…being really popular. I pretty much kept away from all that, but you can't fail to get influenced by walking these corridors for 4 years.

Discussion

Results and implications

The results of the present study generated a preliminary theoretical model describing how synergy between enthusiastic and performance-striving young women and a context overflowing with opportunities and demands resulted in the women's main concern regarding stress and recovery; that is, to find a balance in daily life. It refers to a cumbersome situation where they constantly experienced extensive ambiguity and easily became entangled in a loop of stress and dysfunctional coping behavior, which in turn threatened the balance between stress and recovery. The women tried to handle this concern by setting individual boundaries, leaning against contextual boundaries, and buffering stress through exercise. In light of previous findings, an imbalance between stress and recovery will in the long run jeopardize the maintenance of health and work ability (McEwen & Stellar, 1993). Although the present results partly overlap traditional stress theories in describing how the relationship between individuals and their environment might result in stress (French, Caplan, & Harrison, 1982; Karasek & Theorell, 1990; Siegrist, 1996), this preliminary theoretical model provides more specific and detailed knowledge of how young adult women experience the interaction with their living context in terms of stress and recovery, an area previously scarcely covered (Hildingh et al., 2006).

One of the main constituents in the women's concern was constantly experiencing ambiguity overload. The concept of ambiguity overload captures how the cumulative effects of various dimensions of ambiguity generate intense and constant mental activity due to uncertainty, continuous decision making, and evaluation processes. Hence, the informants’ great enthusiasm and striving for performance were constantly triggered and reinforced by the specific characteristics of their living context, a situation that could result in long periods of intense activity with little possibility of recovery. Handling specific contextual characteristics, such as gender-based structures and performance-focused surroundings, independently leads to stress, However, this effect was significantly amplified by the combined effect of handling various demanding contextual dimensions at the same time. To achieve a sustainable balance between stress and recovery, boundary setting was crucial. At the individual level, interventions should include improving coping resources and strategies. However, our findings indicate that estimating one's own sustainable level of performance and setting essential individual boundaries can be extremely difficult in this cumbersome context. Therefore, focusing solely on this level might result in individuals pushing themselves too hard. Nevertheless, and in line with the experience of informants who felt completely responsible for their own stress levels, responsibility for work-related health has increasingly been shifted from the employer to the individual employee, who is now expected to set her own limits in relation to work (MacEachen et al., 2008). This shift might relate to societal individualization (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 2002) and to the fact that work exposures (e.g., boundaryless work; Allvin, 2008) and work-related health outcomes (e.g., stress-related symptoms) are today more vague and indefinite than in previous industrial settings. The present results suggest that it is particularly important that managers support their co-workers in setting contextual boundaries, to allow for sufficient recovery. However, managers themselves are often overloaded with work and consequently are hindered in supporting their co-workers, so a focus on boundary setting must start at higher organizational levels. Unfortunately, this might be difficult in more extreme work environments, as attitudes rewarding workaholism seem to emerge from high organizational levels. Further research is needed into how individual and contextual boundary settings should be designed, so as best to assist highly educated young women in these occupational areas to balance stress and recovery.

The women also used exercise as a strategy to handle their main concern regarding stress and recovery. In accordance with this strategy, a recent review concluded that the evidence for exercise as an effective coping strategy is broad. They also concluded that the effect of exercise on stress and stress-related health complaints may follow several pathways. For example, exercise may contribute to lowered stress perceptions but it may also work as a buffer for the harmful effects of stress (Gerber, 2009, p. 731). Yet, the results in the present study also showed that exercise could turn into a stressor in itself. Partly, this was about the informants comparing themselves with others, either regarding the amount of workouts per week or one's physical appearance.

Although the patterns identified here were consistent throughout the interviews, some informants seemed to have more extreme ambitions and some contexts also seemed more extreme. Consequently, some individuals might render themselves especially vulnerable by constantly pushing themselves too hard and some contexts might be especially hazardous or difficult to cope with. Previous research has demonstrated that specific individual characteristics might be related to burnout; for example, individuals whose self-esteem is contingent on how they perform are more likely to push themselves too hard (Hallsten, Josephson, & Torgén, 2005; Löve, 2010, p. 617). The informants in the present study often continued at the same high pace even though their bodies were signaling the need for respite by various physical and mental symptoms. It has been demonstrated that pushing oneself too hard through working while ill predicts future long-term sick leave (Bergström, Bodin, Hagberg, Aronsson, & Josephson, 2009; Hansen & Andersen, 2009) and that ignoring stress symptoms and body signals is the first step in a process toward exhaustion (Jingrot & Rosberg, 2008). Future research is needed into the relationship between individual characteristics and hazardous health behavior.

That one contextual dimension concerned gender-based structures suggests that highly educated young women must deal with a somewhat different reality than do highly educated young men (Verdonk et al., 2008, p. 384, 2010, p. 631). The present findings illustrate how the informants over-performed to compensate for being women, which in turn had consequences for the total amount of stressors and the balance between stress and recovery. Explicit belittlement from colleagues and clients has previously been related to over-performance (Parker & Griffin, 2002) and experiences of being less listened to and excluded from informal information and decision networks closely relate to the “chilly climate” concept (Hall & Sandler, 1982). Interestingly, even informants who had not themselves experienced discrimination over-performed by making additional preparations and trying to act more professionally when working with men. That starting a family would adversely affect one's career development has been indicated in previous research (Kirchmeyer, 2006) and was one reason why informants put their thoughts of having children “on hold.” Unfortunately, this stance then becomes a stressor in itself, by magnifying the “biological clock.” Thoughts of combining family and career were also discouraged by a culture having workaholism as its ideal. These ideals has previously been identified as a hindrance to women's career development in male-dominated work environments (Simpson, 1998). Moreover, that women often have a greater total workload than do men (Krantz, Berntsson, & Lundberg, 2005) only exacerbates this situation. Prior studies have proposed that tailored Human Resource policies (Mayrhofer, Meyer, Schiffinger, & Schmidt, 2008) and equalizing caring responsibilities between women and men (Acker, 1998) would help achieve significant progress in these matters. The present study can, of course, not comment on potential gender-based demands and conditions for young men (e.g., masculinity-related stressors and hazardous health behavior), but that women working in male-dominated work environments might experience gender-specific exposures corresponds with previous findings (Bergman & Hallberg, 1997; Parker & Griffin, 2002, p. 235).

Methodological considerations

Even though stress levels varied among the informants, the same theoretical pattern relating to the core category applied to all of them. When we explained and discussed the preliminary theoretical model with other scholars, they approved the models workability and relevance. We acknowledge that qualitative studies result from interaction between the participants and the involved researchers (Charmaz, 2006) and recognize that the chosen study context might increase the risk of preconceptions finding their way into the process (Hall & Callery, 2001). Therefore, the analytical process focused on accurate and constant comparisons combined with keeping the initial codes very close to the data. It has been stated that generalizability also must be an issue for qualitative research (Morse, 1999). In this regard, we argue that this preliminary theoretical model highlights psychosocial processes occurring when extensively ambitious young women face a context overflowing with opportunities and demands, particularly when entering male-dominated occupational areas. Accordingly, this model could be transferred to comparable settings, which according to the literature, are increasingly common in modern western societies, for example, individualization, performance-focused environments, boundaryless work, and breaking with traditional gender positions.

Concluding reflections

This GT study reveals how synergy between extensively ambitious young women and a context overflowing with opportunities and demands resulted in the women constantly striving to find a balance in daily life (main concern). The respondents experienced a constant overload of ambiguity and were easily entangled in a loop of stress and dysfunctional coping behavior, threatening the balance between stress and sufficient recovery. In order to handle this concern, the informants tried balancing extensive ambition and a context overflowing with opportunities and demands (core category) by setting individual boundaries, leaning on contextual boundaries, or buffering stress through exercise. This preliminary theoretical model deepens our understanding of how highly educated women confront complex living conditions that might endanger their possibility of maintaining health and work ability. In accordance with these results, a focus on improved individual coping resources should be complemented with an enhanced focus on contextual boundary setting. Particularly, since our findings indicate that estimating one's own sustainable level of performance and setting essential individual boundaries can be extremely difficult in this cumbersome context. Therefore, focusing solely on the individuals own boundary setting might result in individuals pushing themselves too hard. In delimiting the potentially hazardous effects of the lack of boundaries and performance-focused work environments, political and corporate decision makers must also identify and eliminate gender-based structures and attitudes that increase the amount of stressors among highly educated young women.

Conflict of interest and funding

The author have not received any funding or benefits from industry or elsewhere to conduct this study.