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

On average, on housework (12.6 hours compared to 5.7) and child care (12 hours compared to 6.7).

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

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 labor is often called the because it's . 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 behavior, that found this form of invisible labor also significantly impacts women's workplace experiences and career outcomes, which ultimately undermines gender equity.

The hidden cost of cognitive labor

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 care labor between them and their partner. They also shared their level of , turnover intentions and career resilience.

It's worth noting that our sample was predominantly white, highly educated and included only those in heterosexual relationships, which may limit how widely these findings apply.

Our results reveal that women take on more cognitive labor than men, even when accounting for the distribution of household and paid labor. This imbalance was linked to greater emotional exhaustion, which, in turn, was associated with a higher likelihood of wanting to leave one's job and a reduced ability to cope with workplace changes.

In addition, nearly half the participants had at least one child under the age of 18 living with them. This is notable because school and daycare closures during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic , which women .

We found mothers shouldered a disproportionate amount of child care compared to fathers. Child care—not cognitive labor—was the key predictor of emotional exhaustion, which again resulted in a reduced capacity to cope with their work environment.

In other words, women experienced higher amounts of emotional exhaustion and undermined work outcomes, but the driver varied. For women without children, it was an unequal division of cognitive labor. For mothers, it was unequal child-care responsibilities.

Unpaid labor doesn't just affect mothers

Much of and on unpaid labor tends to conflate it with child care. Yet our findings highlight that unpaid labor affects the careers of both women with and without children.

Work-life balance research and policies often focus on mothers, overlooking the fact that women without children also disproportionately experience burdens at home that can impact their careers.

Our work also contributes to a growing body of research on the work experiences of women without children, who are often rendered invisible in literature. that mothers are more likely than their child-free peers to be granted access to flexible work arrangements. Such differences were not found for men with and without children.

This lack of focus reinforces traditional gender stereotypes of women . Our work takes initial steps to address this gap by shedding light on the experiences and challenges that women without children face in managing work and home duties.

How organizations can support all women

Our findings show that women are overburdened by their domestic responsibilities, which can harm their career outcomes and undermine gender equity. But this is not just a personal issue, but an organizational one as well. Organizations have an important role to play in supporting and retaining women in the workplace. Here are several ways they can help.

1. Offer flexible work arrangements.

Organizations can promote a more equitable division of labor within households by offering work arrangements like flexible hours and remote work. Research has shown that such arrangements .

2. Design flexible work arrangements for all employees, not just parents.

Flexible work arrangements should not be designed with only parents in mind. Women without children also benefit from flexible work arrangements, as they can lessen the strain and resulting career outcomes of cognitive labor. Offering these arrangements to men without children may also encourage them to take on a greater proportion of cognitive labor in their household.

3. Recognize that flexible work arrangements may inadvertently and unfairly benefit men.

Given that women in general take on a greater share of unpaid labor than men, they are more likely to use flexible work arrangements. In contrast, men may use the same flexibility to focus on career advancement. Research has shown that to take on more work, develop human capital or build new skills. Organizations should ensure flexible work policies are used as intended and do not inadvertently advantage men.

4. Normalize the use of flexible work arrangements.

It is not enough for organizations to only offer flexible work arrangements; they must also normalize and encourage their use. Women tend to use them more often because . Managers should lessen such fears by communicating that these arrangements won't lead to penalties, and they should act as role models by using such arrangements themselves.

To better support the challenges that women are facing and promote gender equity, structural changes both within the home and at work are necessary, and organizations play an important role in advancing these changes.