In the 1980s, Swedish researcher Marianne Frankenhaeuser set out to understand something that many people suspected but few had measured: whether work affected men and women differently, not just in experience, but in biology.

She recruited executives in equal-condition workplaces and tracked their cortisol levels and blood pressure throughout the day — at work, and then again after they arrived home. For men, the pattern was predictable: stress indicators rose during the workday and fell once they got home. For women, the opposite occurred. Their stress levels were higher upon arriving home than at any point during the working day — particularly if they lived with children.

Frankenhaeuser's conclusion was plain: home was not a place of recovery for these women. It was another job.

What the double workday looks like in practice

The "double workday" — sometimes called the "second shift" — refers to the unpaid domestic and caregiving work that falls disproportionately on women after their paid employment ends. It includes cooking, cleaning, childcare, elder care, school administration, appointment booking, emotional management of the household, and the invisible cognitive load of keeping track of all of it.

According to the International Labour Organization, women worldwide perform three times more unpaid work at home than men. Globally, 76.2% of all unpaid care time is carried out by women. In Spain, women spend 780 more hours per year than men on household and childcare tasks. In Lithuania, 79% of women do daily cooking and housework, compared to 29% of men.

This is not a minor inconvenience. It is a structural inequity with serious consequences for health, career progression, and quality of life.

The health toll

The double workday is not only exhausting — it is a recognised health risk. Research consistently shows that sex is a significant predictor of work-related stress and burnout, with burnout occurring more frequently in women than in men. Women who experience workplace discrimination are more likely to develop depression. Those working in healthcare — already one of the most demanding environments — face an acute form of this burden: they care for others all day professionally, and then return home to care for others again.

The psychosomatic effects are tangible. Studies suggest that approximately 30% of women seeking treatment for psychosomatic conditions are experiencing some form of physical or psychological abuse — often invisible in clinical settings because gender is not systematically integrated into diagnosis and treatment.

What employers can do

The good news is that employers are not powerless here. The double workday persists in part because workplaces are designed around an implicit assumption: that employees have someone at home managing their domestic lives. That assumption was never universally true, and it is increasingly untenable.

Organisations that take this seriously are making concrete changes:

• Implementing flexible working arrangements that reflect actual caregiving patterns — not just policies on paper, but cultures that make using those arrangements safe.
• Actively encouraging men to use paternity leave and flexible working, normalising shared responsibility at home.
• Creating lactation rooms and, where appropriate, menstrual leave policies — practical recognitions that women's physical realities exist in the workplace.
• Training managers to recognise and challenge the biases that penalise employees who take up family-friendly policies.
• Reviewing performance evaluation systems for hidden bias against employees whose visible availability is constrained by caregiving.

When an employee leaves work and faces the double workday every evening, their productivity, engagement, and long-term health all suffer. This is not a private problem — it is an organisational one.

Why VR Balance focuses on leaders

VR Balance targets business leaders and future leaders specifically because they are the people with the power to change things. Not through individual heroism, but through the decisions that shape culture: how performance is measured, how leave is discussed, how flexibility is normalised or stigmatised.

Understanding the double workday — not abstractly, but viscerally — is the first step toward building organisations where it becomes less necessary, not because women work less, but because the work itself is finally shared.