Effects of mental labor inequality on gendered working-time behavior: Evidence from a factorial survey experiment

Despite a context of welfare state austerity, the family policy domain has seen remarkable expansion during past decades (Ferragina 2019; Ferragina, Seeleib-Kaiser, and Tomlinson 2013; Korpi, Ferrarini, and Englund 2013). As pioneers in the field, Nordic countries now experience broad female labor market participation and relatively high levels of domestic gender equality, two hallmark equality targets. However, zooming in on the two spheres reveals persistent gendered dynamics maintaining a substantial gender pay gap: in Norway, 38% of all female employees work part-time, and most of them for family-related reasons (Mósesdóttir and Ellingsæter 2017). Some scholars have deemed this a “welfare state paradox” (Mandel and Semyonov 2006), whereas others simply point out that current family policy regimes have yet to solve the policy conundrum of extensive family support in labor market structures leading to feminized part-time work (Morgan 2012). In order to close in on the dynamics behind this puzzle, this article argues for the necessity to look beyond the division of physical labor and towards mental labor inequality in household work. Comprising the organizational dimension of combining paid work and care, the invisible nature of mental labor translates into invisible inequalities in couples which are often unaccounted for in household negotiations (Mederer 1993). Indeed, empirical findings show that mental labor inequality stubbornly persists in otherwise egalitarian couples (Holter, Svare, and Egeland 2008; Smeby 2017; Zimmerman et al. 2002). Moreover, even if such inequality is recognized within a couple, women’s perception of fairness (Thompson 1991) and maternal gatekeeping (Allen and Hawkins 1999) may impede the inequality from being perceived as problematic or from being connected to paid work capacity. This article examines whether there is such a connection in a factorial survey experiment done in Norway (N>3000). The hypothesized mechanism is that a larger amount of mental labor implies higher work-family spillover for women (Offer 2014), equating to lower capacity for paid work, regardless of physical task division. If supported, this implies at least three things. First, a reconceptualization of unpaid work that incorporates the mental labor dimension is needed to accurately measure gender (in)equality in households. Second, mental labor inequality constitutes a final hurdle of domestic gender inequality that, despite its abstractness, has concrete economic effects. Third, recognizing mental labor inequality as problematic in its capacity as a facilitator of economic inequality begs the question of what family policy tools are available to counter this dynamic.