Wife Work: Invisible labour in academia and a call for accelerated action

As global gender parity progress remains slow, this International Women’s Day we call on Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to 'accelerate action' and move to rectify the long-standing issues of gender pay gaps and lack of progression for women.

UN Sustainability Development Goal 5 highlights that “Women and girls represent half of the world’s population and therefore also half of its potential. But gender inequality persists everywhere and stagnates social progress.” Whilst navigating such systemic issues is nothing new for women, our new research shows that these issues are partly caused by the volume of emotional labour that women* carry out in Higher Education.

As a group of women academics, navigating the path to promotion, we identified that behind many women’s success stories lay an unheard and unappreciated narrative of invisible labour. We identified that women were being asked to take on tasks and emotional labour that, when it came to promotion or new role applications were essentially “Non-Promotable Tasks”.  From providing emotional support to participating in institutional committees, this silent effort sustains our universities while leaving many working tirelessly in the background on unappreciated and ‘invisible’ tasks.  

Gender disparities in academia

Despite increased participation of women in academia, globally, women still earn 23 percent less than men and spend about three times as many hours in unpaid domestic and care work as men. This gender pay gap widened in 2021-2022 in 20 out of 33 OECD countries. In higher education, only 28% of professors are female despite women comprising 43% of the academic workforce, resulting in an 11.9% pay gap. While the reasons for such disparities are complex and multifaceted, our research specifically addresses the "gender unequal distribution" of academic labour.

Whilst much of the discussion focuses on the mental load that women carry outside the workplace, we draw attention to the mental load inside the workplace. As universities have developed new pathways to promotion (such as education or impact tracks), traditional service work or ‘citizenship’ has become less valued in career advancement yet remains critical to institutional functioning, leading to women’s invisible labour of non-promotable tasks.

Wife-work in academia

Drawing on institutional theory, feminist theory, and the theory of gendered organizations we examined how these institutions, embedded in social norms and values, created patterns of gender distinctions that lead to advantages or exploitations of academics. Therefore, many women are essentially the academic wives of HEIs and such non-promotable tasks take on the form of institutional housekeeping. We deliberately use the term ‘wife work’ due to the pejorative use of such term in the media. In the 1980s Waring’s seminal work If Women Counted, launched a blazing attack on how nations’ economic values exclude women’s unpaid labour rendering it invisible. Institutional wife work is similarly undervalued and underappreciated.

Wife work is effectively service work and include tasks such as supporting and helping students and colleagues, or taking on administrative work while others pursue awards. Such wife work occurs due to societal and institutional expectations that prompt women to take on such tasks, which can lead to emotional dissonance and burnout.

Accelerate action – A time for change:

We recognise that the critical issue lies within organisational practices rather than with women themselves and we call on HEIs to recognise and value women’s work. Such emotional and service work is vital for institutional success and creates a supportive and equitable work environment, for colleagues and students. The burden of responsibility is deeply embedded in societal norms and systemic issues, change may be difficult, but it needs to happen. Accelerating action means acknowledging and recognising the existence and value of invisible and emotional labour as the first step toward ensuring these ‘non-promotable' tasks become more visible and valued.

With this, we call for action and invite all academics to join us, as our work is far from over. On International Women’s Day, we ask HEIs to accelerate action to make the invisible, visible and the non-promotable, promotable.

*we acknowledge that invisible and emotional labour can affect any academic of any gender, particularly those on education/ teaching focussed contracts.