The home as a normative space: working from home and the persistence of women’s ‘mental load’

Abstract

This paper contributes to the emerging literature on post-pandemic ‘new normals’. We explore the cognitive and emotional mental load of housework and care labour, and how it impacts the ability to do work remotely from home. The mental load, as outlined by Dean et al. (2021), is a manifestation of internalized gender norms and plays a crucial role in shaping agency, as it determines what people feel they can (or should) prioritize and demand. We offer a reconceptualization of the mental load that places greater emphasis on agency, drawing on insights from feminist and queer phenomenology and particularly Ahmed (2006) and Dolezal (2017). Based on qualitative interviews with 12 senior academics at a large Norwegian university three years post-lockdown, we find that (1) women more often reported difficulty concentrating due to persistent thoughts about housework, and (2) they were more likely to work in shared spaces designed for reproductive labour (such as the kitchen) and to perform care labour by spontaneously giving up private workspaces intended for paid work (such as a home office), while men expressed a stronger sense of entitlement to these private spaces. We conclude that even in a purportedly gender-equal Nordic country, further efforts are needed to make remote work more equitable.