Invisible Work

Today (Labor Day, 2026) I went out for a walk, in the middle of the day, which is not the brightest thing to do because of the heat wave we have been experiencing here in Tennessee. I really just wanted to move, and see the sun, though….so off I went. I came back about an hour later, dehydrated and wondering why the people who fought so hard for labor rights didn’t fight for all weekends to be three day weekends.

I kid, I kid. But only kind of.

I have never, as a fully fledged adult, had a job where I have not worked more than what I was contractually obligated to work. And while in my earlier professional years I could have been rightly accused of being a workaholic, the fact is that for about 15 years now I have continuously tried to strive for a better work life balance and I am continually coming up short.

As a woman, and a mother, I do a lot (a whole lot) of invisible labor for our household. Keeping up with the mental load (how many times is dance class happening this week, who likes what for lunchboxes, who are the frenemies these days, checking Schoology, who needs forms filled out and when) plus the general overarching state of always wondering if you are raising good humans, is exhausting.

As a professional, I do a lot of invisible labor at my institution as well. Much of it is relational in nature, and some of it defaults to me because I have been there a long time and people think I won’t mind because I love my work. And I do love my work. I love teaching and being with students. Along with parenting, being a professor has been one of the biggest blessings in my life and I hope I have been a blessing to others. I also can own the fact that some of my over-work continues to be related to me; i.e. I need to figure out and really believe that my value is more than the hours I work.

That being said, invisible labor in the workplace is a for real “thing” and I don’t think we are taught how to draw boundaries around some of the more invisible parts of our work. When there are hours of invisible labor each week at work, the part of work that is more “tangible” (i.e. classes to teach, committees to serve on, students to advise, papers to grade, etc) still needs to be done. And if work that is invisible isn’t counted as work, because of its very invisibility, then nothing will change about it.

(Thank heavens my college philosophy professor taught me the meaning of a tautology somewhere circa 1992, otherwise I wouldn’t have a name for this.)

Here’s a 2021 piece from Political Science and Politics on the challenges of retaining women faculty due to invisible labor. It is important to note the extra weight of this on faculty women of color. It isn’t just a problem in the US either.

I care about this for myself, obviously, but I also care about it for younger women in “the academy” everywhere, and for women who will come into it in the future. I don’t remember anyone talking about this when I was in my PhD program, and I didn’t get any mentoring around this as a young academic.

On a personal level, the best advice I could give would be to start with stronger boundaries than I did. And find someone who has been there longer than you who can give you the honest answer about whether or not you can safely say no to certain requests of your time (i.e. another committee, sponsoring an org, etc).

This is a really interesting podcast from The Faculty Factory on organizational wellness as a strategy for supporting faculty. It is a little heavy on the focus of med school faculty but I think the strategies are applicable to other disciplines and institutions more broadly. Here is even a more current piece from The Harvard Business Review on how invisible work is draining the best employees. There are good strategies here for leadership with respect to making the invisible, visible.