Women are exhausted. The 2021 Women in the Workplace report from McKinsey and Lean In showed that the burnout gap between women and men doubled since the year before. Another study conducted in the past two years by Berlin Cameron, Eve Rodsky’s Fair Play and Kantar showed that 68% of U.S. women reported experiencing burnout in the previous week, compared to 50% of U.S. men - with burnout rates even higher at 83% for U.S. women aged 25-34.
One contributing factor to the major burnout women are feeling is the sheer amount of invisible labor that they do in both their professional and home lives, which goes largely unrecognized and undervalued in both spheres. Most of this invisible labor can be considered reproductive labor (which we outlined in a recent post), as it is integral to the functioning of society.Both at home and in the workplace, divisions of labor don’t often account for the disproportionate amount of unseen work that women are doing. Let’s walk through some of the mental and emotional components of invisible labor.
What is invisible labor?
Invisible labor is a form of behind-the-scenes labor that keeps relationships, households, workplaces, and communities running smoothly, yet is largely taken for granted - such as housework and volunteer work. Statistically done more frequently by women, it goes not only unacknowledged and unnoticed, but is also generally unregulated and uncompensated.
Forms of Invisible Labor:
Cognitive Labor
One form of invisible labor is cognitive labor - the multifaceted work of planning and facilitating various forms of reproductive labor. When it comes to maintaining a household or community and its members, this includes:
anticipating household or community needs
researching options for meeting those needs
deciding among the options - weighing logistics, pros and cons, preferences
coordinating the execution of the chosen option - balancing schedules, delegating responsibilities
monitoring and assessing the outcome
Cognitive labor tends to be under-recognized as labor - yet delegating and planning takes mental energy, leaving those who consistently perform it feeling like they have to be “always on.”
This form of labor includes the practical and managerial aspects of household responsibilities - ironing out all the details involved in any activity.
For example, even if one person runs to the grocery store - who made the grocery list? Who researched the recipes for dinner? If one household member brings a child to the doctor, who booked the appointment? Researched the best location and provider for medical care?
Emotional Labor
Emotional labor is the work of maintaining relationships and managing emotions. It involves both self-regulating our own emotions as well as attending to the emotions of others in order to keep the people in our environments comfortable and happy.
Gendered assumptions that women are naturally better at feeling, handling, and expressing emotions than men contribute to the high load of emotional support that women are expected to provide to those around them.
Women are often presumed to be emotionally and temporally available to provide support, empathy, and care to partners, friends, colleagues, students, or children.
Whether or not an individual woman enjoys soothing children or finds personal meaning in being a confidant to a coworker going through a rough patch, this work still tasks her emotional, mental, and energetic reserves.
The Mental Load
The mental load includes anticipating needs for both cognitive and emotional labor all the time. It’s the ongoing mental to-do list for what one needs to prepare for, practically and emotionally, to keep things running smoothly.
The mental load involves planning in advance for chores (defrosting the meat for dinner, swapping out bedding) and social tasks (sending thank you emails, calling relatives for their birthday), delegating them, sending reminders, checking in on their completion, picking up the slack if someone drops the ball, and coming up with backup plans if something goes wrong.
Carrying the mental load is complex work. At any given time, it involves being aware of multiple family or community members’ schedules and what associated emotional needs might arise at any given time - including one’s own.
This calls for layered, ever-present attention to how each piece of the puzzle fits on any given day - and often the mental load of being responsible for everyone around us disproportionately falls on women.
Gendered Assumptions
The flawed assumption that women are naturally skilled at and interested in emotional and practical tasks that are socially expected of them is a barrier to not only the visibility of this work as labor but also its cultural and economic valuation.
Gender norms and patriarchal social structures reinforce to women that our value comes from serving and helping, so we build those skills - yet we're perceived as intrinsically better at them. We are not compensated or recognized for exercising "innate" capacities - even if doing so expends an immense amount of energy or time, or requires considerable finesse and expertise.
Just because you can’t see what she is carrying, or she carries it well, doesn’t mean it’s not heavy.
Whether at home or at work, even if a division of labor seems somewhat equal on the surface, women are juggling heavier burdens of invisible labor than we are recognized for. Telling us to "practice self care" or to "de-stress" is not enough to fix these unseen inequities in workload.
For any given woman, this gender inequity intersects with other aspects of her identity, such as ability or race. Living under multiple forms of oppression can compound one's everyday mental load.
Stay tuned for more about how the concepts discussed in this post can show up in the workplace.
SOURCES:
Daniels, A. K. (1987). Invisible Work. Social Problems, 34(5), 403–415. https://doi.org/10.2307/800538
https://www.thefemalelead.com/_files/ugd/05606b_2c06ec00b1d84c2da686cbdc4232b9cd.pdf
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/wellbeing/articles/menenjoyfivehoursmoreleisuretimeperweekthanwomen/2018-01-09
Duffy, M. 2005. “Reproducing labor inequalities: challenges for feminists conceptualizing care at the intersections of gender, race, and class.” Gender & Society 19(1): 66-82.
Daminger, A. (2019) “The Cognitive Dimension of Household Labor.” American Sociological Review.
Rodsky, E. (2019). Fair play: a game-changing solution for when you have too much to do (and more life to live). First large print edition. New York, Random House.
Hartley, G. (2018). Fed up: emotional labor, women, and the way forward. Unabridged. [United States], HarperAudio.
https://nwlc.org/its-time-to-recognize-womens-emotional-labor/
Daminger, A. (2020). De-gendered Processes, Gendered Outcomes: How Egalitarian Couples Make Sense of Non-egalitarian Household Practices. American Sociological Review, 85(5), 806–829. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122420950208
https://hbr.org/2021/10/research-women-took-on-even-more-invisible-work-during-the-pandemic
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