The 'mental load': Trends and consequences at the gender equality frontier

How does the 'mental load' -- the cognitive or organizational dimension of household labor -- affect societal participation in gender egalitarian contexts? Research has shown that women, and especially mothers, have substantially higher mental loads compared to men, and that this can be detrimental to their participation in politics and the labor market. The implication is profound: the mental load, which is severely underexplored in research, could be an important contributor to persisting gender inequalities worldwide. The current state of knowledge is based on liberal, familistic welfare states that amount to most-likely cases. Research from more gender egalitarian contexts is thus needed to supply our knowledge with how far-reaching effects are and to identify possible cushioning policy measures. This paper contributes to the furthering of the research agenda on the mental load in this way by examining the case of Norway through original survey data (N= 2257). First, it shows that the mental load is highly unequal also in a social democratic, de-familistic welfare state. Second, the results demonstrate that a high mental load significantly decreases societal participation in both politics and the labor market, although more robustly in the latter. Particularly, the paper argues that gendered mental loads contribute to the stubborn patterns of feminized part-time work in the Nordics. The findings imply a need to search for more effective means to combat mental load inequality.