Despite progress toward gender equity, many women continue to take on the majority of unpaid labour within their households, including housework and child care.

On average, women spend twice as much time as men per week on housework (12.6 hours compared to 5.7) and child care (12 hours compared to 6.7).

Unpaid labour also includes cognitive labour — the mental work of anticipating household needs, identifying and weighing options to fulfil them and monitoring whether those needs have been met.

Cognitive labour underpins many physical household and child-care tasks. For example, cooking or shopping for the household requires planning meals around preferences, anticipating various needs, finding alternatives if needed and keeping track of satisfaction with meals and products.

Cognitive labour is often called the “third shift” because it’s largely mental and invisible in nature. This work is often done in the background and is dispersed throughout the day, and women in heterosexual couples tend to shoulder most of it.

As experts in organizational behaviour, we recently conducted a study that found this form of invisible labour also significantly impacts women’s workplace experiences and career outcomes, which ultimately undermines gender equity.

For our study, we surveyed 263 employed women and men in heterosexual relationships with employed partners across the United States and Canada. Over seven weeks from April to May 2020, participants reported weekly on the division of cognitive, household, paid and child........

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