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Uncommon women

Welcome to an exciting and important workplace study! We call it Uncommon Women. It will run during 2026 and aims to explore how women can improve their mental health by loosening the trauma bonds stemming from traditional gender power structures in the workplace.

The study offers a training program for women experiencing stress that includes:

  • Digital training program supporting a shift of perception of physical or mental exhaustion from individual weakness to output from gender structures at work
  • Facilitated online group meetings where you share your reflections and relate to others

Do you also find this exciting? Would you like to participate?

Women as a shared resource

Uncommon women

Uncommon Women is inspired by the "tragedy of the commons", which theorizes how individuals tend to overexploit shared resources for personal gain.

When individuals fail to take responsibility for collective resources, it leads to negative consequences for everyone.

The "tragedy" lies in the eventual destruction of common resources as a result of short-sighted thinking and self-interest.

A unique perspective

Women tend to dedicate more time and energy to activities that do not benefit their own interests, but rather those around them. Women become 'the common resource' that are expected to take responsibility for and dedicate their time and knowledge for the benefit of all.

We know this because women carry more of the double burden of paid and unpaid work, are overrepresented in supportive positions and roles in the workplace, are expected to be relationally oriented, warm, and caring, and to accept lower pay than men for equivalent work.

Loosening the trauma bonds

Uncommon Women is a workplace study that aims to explore how underlying social power structures between genders are linked to women's job burnout.

The Uncommon Women study looks beyond conventional solutions, dwelving deeper into invisible barriers that prevent women from finding new paths to empowerment and health.

We explore tools and methods to dissolve trauma bonds that have been woven into women's bodies and minds by traditional gender power structures for centuries.

The study targets women because job burnout is increasing most significantly among women.

Traditionally Female-Dominated Professions

Statsistics show that professions with a high degree of social interaction are affected by stress and burnout. Female-dominated care professions are at the top, which highlights connections between gender structures and mental illness/health.

New Female-Dominated Professions

Marketing and Communications, another but more modern and recent profession, has grown to become female-dominated. And statistics show it has the highest number of new sick leaves due to work-related burnout.

Gender Differences in Management

Men who are managers are less likely to be on sick leave than women who are managers. This is likely due to women having lower management grades, more direct reports, and consequently less freedom than men, which points to gendered differences in the conditions for acting as a manager.

Increased Risk for Women with Young Children

Women between 30–39 years old with children under 9 years old run a 41% higher risk of suffering from work-related burnout than men of the same age and situation. This demonstrates the effect of carrying more of the double burden of work, paid and unpaid.

Gender Roles Don't Develop in a Void- Context Determines the Outcome

Human Interactions

In the workplace, we construct gender by treating men and women differently. We expect men and women to have different interests, knowledge, and attitudes, and therefore coach women and men into different tasks and roles. Acting against ingrained behavioral patterns is challenging for everyone because established ways of saying and doing are part of a larger whole.

Organizational Allowance

When organizations fail to detect, or choose not to act when discovered, that men and women face different conditions to perform at work, an informal organization emerges where formal rules do not apply equally to all. Traditional gender power structures obscure how organizations prioritize men for leadership positions, preconcieve men's deeds more positively, allow men to take risks and fail more than women, value men's work more highly, and leniently interpret men's shortcomings.

Institutional Betrayal

Gender is embedded in all environments where people exist. Together, these environments normalize socially and culturally an idea of what it means to be men and a women. They determine what is an appropriate role for men and women to play in a family, in the neighbourhood, in a classroom, at the gym, in the dorm, in the workplace, at a party, etc etc. When all these social contexts push the gender role in the same direction, it becomes difficult to escape and it can feel like an institutional betrayal against those who wish to develop freely as individuals, regardless of gender.

Workplace Circumstances that Stress Everyone but Affect Women More Often and Negatively:

  • Insufficient support or inadequate attention from the immediate supervisor or manager
  • Lack of collegial support
  • The experience of not being invisible in and for their professional role
  • Unintentionally excluded from or overlooked in participating in professional networks or groups for knowledge exchange
  • Emotional labor, i.e., the energy drain from dealing with demeaning comments or actions
  • Exposure to, subject to and victim of sexual harassments
  • Homosociality, i.e., a male-dominated workplace culture and business environment that gives men a general advantage
  • Double burden, i.e., the unpaid duties and responsibility for home, young children, and elderly relatives in addition to paid work
  • Hybrid workplace has blurred the confine between work and home but it has not changed the distribution of unpaid work at home

Practices for Detecting and Acting against Hurting Gender Roles

Uncommon Women consists of three parts:

  • Digital training program that supports a shift of reflection on individual weakness to a manifestation of gender structure at work
  • Facilitated online group meetings where you share your reflections and relate to others

The digital training program activates your mind, body, soul and heart through

  • Reflection queries
  • Breathing exercises
  • Specially composed music

Training Program Structure and Core Activities

1

Dare to say Yes

The first important step is to register your participation in the study.

2

Practice as you Wish

You choose your own pace in the program and you are free to stop at any time.

3

Five Themes

The training consists of 25 exercises divided into 5 themes.

4

Personal Diary

Record your reflections in a personal digital diary. Go back to modify, or add as you wish.

5

Embodied Signals

You train your ability to detect physical reactions to social environments.

6

Language is Key

A core and transformative ability this program builds is the capacity to articulate how your body reacts to external circumstances.

7

Group Meetings

Join weekly researcher-led online meetings to build comfort and knowledge.

8

Social Support

An exclusive webchat forum is available continousely for participants to share and connect with each other.

9

Result Integration

We anticipate noticeable results for participants that follow through.

Reasons and timing for participation

Prevention of Stress

This program applies to you who feel that stress is beginning to take hold of your body and daily life, thereby limiting you. It is for you who sense that the stress is more context driven and that your body is trying to communicate something important, but you want help in discerning these messages.

Social Discomfort

Whether you are currently experiencing a period, or have previously experienced periods, that you would describe as socially discomfortable, this training could offer new perspectives and ways to explain and resolve that feeling of discomfort.

Additional Tools

Previous studies have shown success in reducing women's stress-related exhaustion by focusing on the combination of awareness body reaction and intellectual reasoning about gender power structures. We view this program as a healing complement to measures already provided by occupational health services for your exhaustion syndromes.

Upon return to Work

Women who have recovered from mental exhaustion and return to work, which most probably has not changed in any respect, risk relapse. This program increases your resilience against gender power related stressors that remain in the workplace's structure and culture and risk triggering negative bodily reactions.

How to participate?

Women

The study is open between September 2025 and June 2026 to working women. Participants are welcome to join and leave at any time. The program is self-paced and recommended to take at least 30 days, ie maximum one exercise per day. The program consists of these three components:

  • A self-paced digital training program featuring 25 research-based quests and exercises.
  • Weekly expert-led online group meetings for participants who want to join in.
  • An exclusive webchat open for participants only to share with each other and relate to others' reflections.

Organizations

Organizations committed to improving workplace mental health are welcome to offer their women employees to participate in this study, whether currently on sick leave or not.

We believe that the final analysis, insights, and results of this study will help companies reduce sick leave related to stress and mental illness by proactively using knowledge of how gender power structures affect women in often invisible and unintentional ways.

REGISTER YOUR INTEREST TO PARTICIPATE:

Uncommon Women - Sign up !

Welcome!
Camilla Rundberg, Doctor of Economics

Disputerad 2023 (KTH) med avhandlingen "Critical conversations - Constructing gender in career counselling" URN: urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-323552





Expected Benefits and Relevance

For Women

Physical Well-being

The training helps women become aware of their bodies’ signals and communication patterns, based on an understanding of social influence.

Social Well-being

Women gain insight into how workplace social structures condition their behavior and learn how they can act differently to influence the gender power structure.

Mental Well-being

Women learn concrete strategies for managing stress and challenges related to the gender power structure, which enhance their ability to act proactively and strengthen their mental well-being.

For Organizations

A New Dimension of Health

Access to preliminary analyses and discussions of conclusions provides the organization with a solid foundation for fact-based decisions and strategic improvements in everyone’s well-being and inclusion.

A Strategic Narrative

Participants’ reflections are analyzed narratively, giving employers insights into how to proactively create workplaces that do not make women more ill than men.

Healthy Work Environment

Organizations gain valuable insights into how to create a more equal, inclusive, and supportive work environment, which reduces sick leave and increases productivity.