Gendered Work: The Impact of Sexual Division of Labour on Women

Work is never just work. Who does it, how it is valued, and whether it is paid at all – these questions have always had a gendered dimension. The sexual division of labour refers to the systematic way societies assign different types of work to men and women based on gender, not ability. From household chores to professional careers, this division shapes economic outcomes, reinforces social hierarchies, and pushes women into roles that are often invisible, underpaid, or entirely uncompensated. Understanding this structure is central to understanding why gender inequality persists across the world today.

What is the sexual division of labour?
Paid vs. unpaid labour: a fundamental divide
The agriculture example: invisible contributions in plain sight
The double burden: when paid work is added to unpaid work
Occupational segregation and the gender pay gap
Emotional labour: the hidden dimension of gendered work
Emotional labour in the workplace: a gendered burden
Why this matters: from household to economy

What is the sexual division of labour?

At its core, the sexual division of labour is the allocation of tasks and responsibilities based on perceived differences between men and women. Historically, men were expected to occupy public roles – working in markets, fields, and industries – while women were confined to the domestic sphere: cooking, cleaning, and childcare. Research published in the Oxford Review of Economic Policy describes this as a near-universal feature of patriarchal structures across the world: an asymmetrical arrangement that assigns unpaid care and domestic work primarily to women, while giving men privileged access to material resources and economic opportunities.

This is not a natural or inevitable arrangement. It is a socially constructed system, reinforced through cultural norms, legal structures, and economic incentives. The Economics Observatory notes that social norms – what is considered appropriate for men and women to do in society – play a powerful role in maintaining this division, with the “male breadwinner model” continuing to shape career investment and domestic expectations for millions of families.

Paid vs. unpaid labour: a fundamental divide

One of the most important distinctions in the sexual division of labour is between paid work (recognised by markets and compensated with wages) and unpaid work (done in the home and community, with no financial compensation). Women bear a disproportionate share of unpaid labour globally. UNICEF data shows that girls aged 5-14 spend 160 million more hours every day on unpaid care and domestic work than boys of the same age – and these disparities only deepen in adulthood.

Springer’s academic research on gender and unpaid work confirms that women spend more time on housework than men regardless of whether they are employed – and that they take greater responsibility for childcare, even in dual-earner households. A longitudinal study published in PMC found that after the birth of a child, women take on over two additional hours of work per day compared to just 40 extra minutes for men. The birth of a child, in other words, triggers a dramatic gender realignment of domestic labour – even among educated couples with equal earning capacity.

This unequal distribution creates what economists call time poverty – women simply have fewer discretionary hours to invest in career development, education, or rest. According to the ILO, women not only spend less time in paid work, they dedicate significantly more time to unpaid care work, contributing to both income poverty and time poverty relative to men. Despite this fundamental contribution to households and economies, unpaid care and domestic work remains largely unrecognised in dominant economic measures such as GDP.

The agriculture example: invisible contributions in plain sight

Agriculture provides one of the clearest illustrations of how the sexual division of labour operates. In rural economies across the Global South, women are central to food production – planting, weeding, harvesting, and processing crops. Yet their contributions are routinely classified as “family help” rather than formal employment, stripping them of access to wages, land ownership, and economic decision-making.

The ILO acknowledges that existing statistical standards have historically failed to capture the full extent of women’s work in rural and agricultural settings, rendering their labour invisible in official data. Men, by contrast, tend to control cash crops, market transactions, and land ownership – the aspects of agriculture that generate income and confer economic status. The same physical landscape hosts two entirely different economic realities, determined not by skill or effort, but by gender.

The double burden: when paid work is added to unpaid work

As more women enter formal employment, many find themselves carrying a “double burden” – managing professional responsibilities alongside the full weight of domestic labour. Rather than domestic work being redistributed, it largely remains with women. Cambridge University Press research on gender inequality notes this dual aspect clearly: most women retain primary responsibility for caring and domestic work while simultaneously not receiving the same rewards from paid employment as men.

Sociologist Arlie Hochschild famously called this the “second shift” – the hours of domestic labour that working women take on after returning home from paid jobs. This dual role limits women’s capacity for career advancement, skill development, and even rest. It is a structural trap, not a personal choice.

The OECD’s 2023 analysis found that in all EU and OECD countries, women are less likely to be in the labour force than men, and that disproportionate unpaid childcare and household responsibilities are a key reason – even as young women today are more highly educated than their male counterparts. The data makes one thing clear: education alone cannot overcome structural inequality when domestic labour remains unequally distributed.

Occupational segregation and the gender pay gap

The sexual division of labour doesn’t just shape what happens at home – it structures the labour market itself. Occupational segregation, the concentration of women in certain industries and job types, is a direct extension of gendered assumptions about who should do what kind of work. As gender studies research highlights, women dominate sectors like teaching, nursing, and caregiving, which are consistently lower-paid, while men are overrepresented in higher-paying fields such as finance, engineering, and technology.

This is not coincidental. Fields associated with care, empathy, and service – historically seen as extensions of women’s domestic roles – receive lower compensation than fields associated with technical expertise or physical strength, regardless of the skill required. ILO data shows that as of 2023, women hold only 30 per cent of managerial positions globally, and that among employed workers, women earn 78 cents for every dollar earned by men annually. The OECD reports that in 2023, the median full-time working woman earned 11% less than the median full-time working man across OECD countries – an improvement from 19% in 1995, but still a persistent gap reflecting structural devaluation of women’s work.

Emotional labour: the hidden dimension of gendered work

Beyond physical and domestic tasks, the sexual division of labour also encompasses emotional labour – a concept introduced by sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild in her 1983 book The Managed Heart. Hochschild defined it as the management of feeling to produce a publicly observable display as a condition of employment – essentially, being paid to perform specific emotions.

Jobs requiring emotional labour share three features: they involve direct contact with the public, they require the worker to produce an emotional state in another person, and the employer exercises control over those emotional performances through training and supervision. Flight attendants, nurses, social workers, teachers, and customer service representatives are classic examples. What these occupations have in common, beyond the emotional demands, is that they are disproportionately occupied by women and are consistently among the lower-paying professions.

This is not accidental. Scholarly analysis of Hochschild’s work points out that many low-wage service jobs rely on workers drawing on skills and emotional sensibilities developed through domestic socialisation – nurturing, patience, attentiveness. Because these traits are viewed as natural female attributes rather than learned professional skills, the labour involved is systematically undervalued. Employers benefit from a workforce that brings emotional competence to the job without demanding premium pay for it.

Emotional labour in the workplace: a gendered burden

Writing in the World Economic Forum, author Gemma Hartley explains that invisible unpaid tasks at work – organising office events, making tea rounds, checking in on colleagues – fall disproportionately on women because of gendered stereotypes that cast women as more empathetic and nurturing. Women also lack the “status shield” that men have, the social protection that allows them to decline tasks outside their formal role without social penalty. The result is that women frequently take on additional, uncompensated emotional and administrative labour in professional settings, detracting from time and energy that could be directed toward their own career advancement.

This burden is further intensified for women of colour, who must also manage racially motivated hostility and microaggressions in addition to gender-based expectations – a compounding of emotional labour that has significant implications for wellbeing and career progression.

Why this matters: from household to economy

The sexual division of labour is not simply a domestic issue. Its effects compound across a lifetime. Women’s lower lifetime earnings, interrupted career paths, and concentration in undervalued sectors translate into higher rates of poverty in old age, reduced financial independence, and constrained life choices. Research on women in the economy describes this as a cycle: women have less discretionary time to invest in career development, leading to lower earnings, which in turn makes it economically rational for households to deprioritise women’s careers when resource decisions arise.

At the macro level, the Economics Observatory argues that the gender division of labour is not only inequitable but economically inefficient. When women’s talents are underused through occupational segregation and domestic burden, entire economies lose productive capacity. Countries with greater gender equality in labour participation consistently demonstrate stronger economic performance and greater resilience.

Addressing the sexual division of labour requires more than individual change – it demands structural interventions. These include counting unpaid care work in national economic accounts, investing in affordable childcare infrastructure, enforcing equal pay legislation, and redesigning parental leave policies so that childcare responsibilities are shared more equally. The ILO has identified investment in early childhood care and education as among the most effective policy tools for reducing women’s inactivity due to unpaid care responsibilities – a direct intervention in the structural conditions that sustain gendered labour divisions.

The sexual division of labour is not a relic of the past. It operates today, in homes, farms, hospitals, offices, and call centres around the world. Recognising it – naming it clearly – is the first step toward dismantling it.

What do you think? If emotional labour and domestic work were formally counted as part of a nation’s economy, how might that change the way societies value and compensate women’s contributions? And given that the gender pay gap persists even among the most educated workers, do you think structural policies alone are sufficient to close it – or does something deeper need to shift?

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Table of Contents

What is the sexual division of labour? 🔗

Paid vs. unpaid labour: a fundamental divide 🔗

The agriculture example: invisible contributions in plain sight 🔗

The double burden: when paid work is added to unpaid work 🔗

Occupational segregation and the gender pay gap 🔗

Emotional labour: the hidden dimension of gendered work 🔗

Emotional labour in the workplace: a gendered burden 🔗

Why this matters: from household to economy 🔗