The state of women’s mental load at work

The invisible cognitive burden women carry & what it’s costing them at work

By Katrina Zalcmane and Zahra Bhatti, co-founders of Véa.

Two people can share household responsibilities while one still carries most of the mental load.

One person does the shopping. The other notices what is missing, plans the meals, keeps track of what everyone needs and makes sure the shopping happens in the first place. Both have contributed, although much of the planning may have fallen to one person.

Now consider what happens when that ongoing responsibility sits alongside a demanding career. A woman may be managing deadlines, people and business decisions while simultaneously keeping track of family needs, finances, appointments and everything else requiring her attention. There is little indication of that additional workload in her job description, working hours or performance review.

This cognitive labour has been described as the invisible third shift: the anticipating, organising, remembering and monitoring that takes place alongside paid employment and physical unpaid work.

The implications extend into women’s working lives. Research is beginning to establish links between cognitive labour, emotional exhaustion and career outcomes, while large workplace surveys continue to report high levels of burnout and dissatisfaction among women.

This report brings that evidence together with new analysis from Véa and conversations with women in senior roles to examine how mental load accumulates, what it costs women professionally and how much of it employers currently understand.

The work before the work

The mental effort involved in completing a task often starts long before the task itself.

Making a doctor’s appointment takes a few minutes. Remembering that it needs to happen, researching options, coordinating schedules and following up afterwards involves considerably more. The same applies to managing household finances, organising family commitments, keeping track of medication or anticipating what another person will need.

Much of this work is difficult to quantify because responsibility is continuous, even when no task is being actively performed.

A study published in European Societies, drawing on survey data from ten European countries, found substantial differences in how couples share cognitive household labour.

When women were asked who usually organised joint activities, 26 per cent said women usually or always took responsibility, compared with 7 per cent who said men did. While most respondents reported sharing this task, the imbalance among those carrying the greater share was pronounced.

Research also suggests that sharing the physical work does not necessarily mean sharing the thinking behind it.

Mothers of young children reported handling 72.6 per cent of the cognitive labour, compared with 63.6 per cent of the physical work.

The researchers found that greater responsibility for cognitive labour was associated with higher stress, burnout and depressive symptoms.

The study focused on mothers but the broader issue extends beyond childcare. Women also coordinate care for ageing relatives, manage household administration, organise relationships and anticipate the needs of people around them.

One senior consultant described the experience:

“For me, mental load is that constant inner voice telling me I need to be prepared for everything, that nothing can wait, that I have to do it all right now. It’s carrying dozens of things in my head and feeling like I can’t let any of them drop.”

Responsibility of this kind occupies attention regardless of whether the task is urgent. It can persist through a meeting, a commute or an evening supposedly reserved for rest.

That matters when we consider what someone has available to give to their work.

One brain, multiple shifts

The responsibilities women carry outside work compete for attention with everything their employers expect them to manage.

An aging parent’s medical appointment may need arranging between meetings. A household decision may require attention during a busy afternoon. Financial concerns, family commitments and unresolved problems rarely wait until the working day is finished.

Meanwhile, paid work creates its own demands on attention. Beyond immediate responsibilities, employees are expected to anticipate problems, manage relationships, prepare for upcoming decisions and keep track of unfinished work.

Some of these responsibilities are formally recognised. Others are essential to keeping an organisation functioning but contribute little to career advancement.

Researchers have identified a category of non-promotable work, including organising team activities, mentoring colleagues, serving on committees and carrying out administrative responsibilities that fall outside an employee’s core role.

Women are 48 per cent more likely than men to volunteer for non-promotable tasks. They were also more likely to be asked to take them on.

For a woman already managing substantial responsibilities outside work, these additional demands can become another source of pressure. They occupy time and attention that could otherwise be directed towards recognised priorities, professional development or recovery.

A director in management consulting, specialising in human capital and people strategy, described the gap between the responsibilities organisations account for and those their employees actually carry:

“For women, that might mean managing a family alongside a career, remembering appointments, navigating treatment for themselves or a parent, planning around unpredictable energy levels or constantly anticipating what needs to happen next.”

She added:

“None of this necessarily appears in a workforce plan or employee survey. Yet it consumes real cognitive capacity.”

There is also the matter of what happens after working hours. Only 4 in 10 women feel able to switch off from work.

Unfinished conversations, upcoming deadlines and concerns about performance can continue occupying attention throughout the evening. For women managing responsibilities across several areas of life, opportunities for uninterrupted rest may already be limited.

Working hours, therefore, offer an incomplete account of the demands placed on someone. Two employees with similar roles, workloads and performance may have very different amounts of mental capacity available to sustain that performance.

The cost appears later

A woman can continue meeting deadlines, managing her team and receiving positive performance reviews while becoming increasingly exhausted.

The early signs may be difficult for an employer to recognise. She might struggle to concentrate after work, sleep poorly, become more anxious or find herself with little energy for activities she previously enjoyed.

Those changes can develop for months before anything about her professional performance suggests a problem.

One senior manager working in fintech described experiencing this after taking on a disproportionate share of organisational responsibilities:

“I experienced anxiety and overwhelm. I couldn’t sleep, was edgy and unable to physically relax or sit still. After a few months of it, I started to burn out and had to step back from the workload and wind down my pace to recover.”

Her manager supported her decision to reduce her workload. Yet, as she explained, they never explicitly discussed the hidden responsibilities that had contributed to her exhaustion.

Research into the invisible third shift has found that women carrying a greater share of cognitive household responsibilities experience higher levels of emotional exhaustion. That exhaustion is also associated with greater intentions to leave employment and lower career resilience.

These findings sit alongside a concerning picture of women’s experiences at work.

60 per cent of senior-level women frequently experienced burnout, compared with 50 per cent of senior-level men. Meanwhile, 56 per cent had seriously considered leaving their organisation in the previous year.

The consequences can also emerge through less visible career decisions. Turning down a promotion because the additional responsibility feels unmanageable. Reducing working hours to create more space outside work. Choosing a less demanding role despite having the skills and ambition to progress.

These decisions are often understood as individual preferences, with limited consideration of the responsibilities influencing them.

For employers, this creates a difficult problem. By the time a woman reduces her workload, disengages or considers leaving, the pressures behind that decision may have been accumulating for months or years.

And throughout much of that time, she may have been one of the organisation’s strongest performers.

How work shows up in women’s reflections

Workplace surveys can tell us how frequently women report stress, burnout or dissatisfaction. They offer less insight into what women are thinking about when those experiences occur.

Private reflection reveals more about the concerns, recurring thoughts and emotional pressures that sit behind those experiences.

We’re seeing this in how people engage with Véa. Early analysis of activity on the platform found that work stress was the most common emotional trigger in journalling and AI-assisted reflection.

The findings also suggest that having space to process these experiences can make a difference.

Approximately 66 per cent of journalling sessions were associated with a positive emotional shift, with work-related stress among the areas showing encouraging early results.

Interestingly, positive shifts were particularly common when people approached their reflections with a hopeful or self-reflective mindset.

Conversations associated with positive outcomes also lasted longer, averaging around 14 minutes compared with 10 minutes for those with no significant emotional change.

Frequency appeared to matter too. People who journalled more regularly tended to record more moments of insight, while the length of individual entries showed a much weaker relationship.

Although these findings are preliminary, they suggest there may be value in consistent reflection and taking the time to process experiences as they arise.

The women interviewed for this report described how professional responsibilities continued occupying their thoughts long after the working day ended.

Some struggled to switch off, while others experienced anxiety, disrupted sleep and a persistent sense of responsibility for what needed to happen next.

These experiences rarely appear in conventional assessments of workload. A woman may have completed her tasks for the day while continuing to process difficult conversations, anticipate problems or question decisions.

The mental effort associated with work can continue long after the work itself is finished. Understanding how frequently these pressures arise and how employees process them could help organisations recognise patterns that might otherwise go unnoticed until they begin affecting wellbeing, performance or career decisions.

The gap in workplace wellbeing

Corporate wellbeing has expanded considerably in recent years. Mental health support, employee assistance programmes, menopause policies and flexible working arrangements are now established parts of many organisations’ employee offerings.

Yet women’s experiences suggest significant gaps remain.

Only 43 per cent of women believe they receive sufficient mental health support from their employer, according to Deloitte’s 2025 global survey. Meanwhile, 36 per cent reported higher stress levels than a year earlier, and a quarter had taken time off because of mental health challenges.^[8]

The question for employers is whether the support available addresses the pressures contributing to these experiences.

Mental load presents a particular challenge because it cuts across professional and personal responsibilities. It can involve managing a demanding role, taking on additional organisational work and keeping track of responsibilities outside employment.

An employee experiencing this accumulation of pressure may be offered mindfulness resources, resilience training or advice on setting boundaries.

Such interventions can be valuable, but their impact is limited when the underlying distribution of responsibilities remains unchanged.

A management consulting director specialising in people strategy drew a comparison with how organisations approach operational problems:

“In people strategy, we would never expect an organisation to solve an overloaded team simply by telling people to become more resilient. We would look at the system: what work can be removed, redistributed or redesigned?”

Applying that thinking to mental load requires organisations to examine how work is distributed and recognised.

Who consistently takes responsibility for organising, coordinating and following up? Which employees absorb additional emotional or administrative work?

How much of that contribution is reflected in performance reviews and promotion decisions?

There is also the question of how managers respond when employees begin showing signs of strain.

A senior executive in leadership development highlighted the importance of maintaining ambition while recognising that employees’ capacity changes at different stages of life:

“When someone is going through a particularly demanding stage of life, the solution isn’t to lower expectations or take away meaningful work. It’s to rethink priorities, redistribute less essential tasks, and allow people to focus on where they add the most value. Flexibility should enable performance, not feel like charity or come at the expense of ambition.”

This perspective is particularly relevant to women’s career progression. Accommodating changing circumstances should allow women to continue contributing and advancing professionally, rather than quietly limiting the opportunities available to them.

One senior consultant in management consulting described a positive experience:

“I feel like I can be honest with my managers about how I’m doing and what I’m carrying, and that openness makes a real difference.”

Her experience highlights the importance of an environment where employees feel comfortable discussing the pressures affecting them.

The senior manager in fintech described earlier also received support when she began experiencing burnout. However, the additional organisational responsibilities contributing to her exhaustion had never been explicitly addressed.

Both experiences highlight the importance of supportive management but also the need to recognise mounting pressure before an employee reaches breaking point.

For organisations, this means looking more closely at the work employees take on beyond their formal responsibilities, how those demands accumulate and whether managers have enough visibility to intervene earlier.

It also means recognising that an employee’s capacity is influenced by responsibilities extending beyond the workplace.

As companies continue investing in wellbeing, understanding these pressures should become part of how they assess workload, manage teams and create sustainable working environments.

Towards a fuller picture of women’s working lives

Mental load has consequences for women’s wellbeing, professional capacity and career decisions. Yet much of it remains outside the measures organisations use to understand workload and employee experience.

The women interviewed for this report described carrying additional responsibilities while continuing to perform, manage teams and progress professionally. In some cases, the consequences only became apparent when their wellbeing began to deteriorate.

At Véa, our work focuses on bringing greater understanding to women’s mental health through neuroscience-informed reflection, longitudinal insights and women’s lived experience.

Through our research, community and workplace collaborations, we are exploring how recurring emotional patterns and sources of mental load can be recognised earlier.

When women step back from leadership opportunities, reduce their working hours or leave organisations altogether, employers tend to focus on the decision itself. There is considerably less examination of the responsibilities that may have influenced it.

As organisations continue investing in women’s wellbeing, mental load deserves a more prominent place in how they assess workload, design roles and understand career progression.

Recognising these pressures earlier could make a meaningful difference to the women carrying them and the organisations hoping to retain them.

Learn more about Véa at veajournal.com