2025/01/01 by Anna Helgøy, Ana Catalano Weeks · 2 voices · 8 citations
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Biology #Place Attachment and Urban Studies #Political science #Politics #Priming (agriculture) #Psychology #Public life #Social psychology #Sport and Mega-Event Impacts #Work-Family Balance Challenges
paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/s0007123424000826
published in British Journal of Political Science 55 (Cambridge University Press)
openalex publication_date 2025/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22
Abstract How does cognitive household labour – the ‘mental load’ involved in anticipating, fulfilling, and monitoring household needs – influence decisions about whether and how to participate in public life? Studies suggest women take on the vast majority of this load, yet the impact of these private sector inequalities on participation in public life is underexplored. To make progress on these questions, we contribute new causal evidence about the effect of prompting respondents to think about their own mental loads in a survey experiment fielded to employed British parents. Our main argument is that priming the mental load will crowd out interest in political and labour market participation. In line with expectations, our survey experiment finds a strong negative effect of mental load priming on intentions to engage in politics and at work. Our results offer new insights about the continuing relevance of household-based inequalities to gender equality in public life.