Experiment No. 35: Think Systems Change

In Experiment No. 17, BLLx honored the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg for her trailblazing off the bench, particularly her pushback against the school system’s default to call mothers when something comes up. Ginsburg famously complained that her children’s school would call her whenever they needed a parent, despite her extremely busy, public life and her husband’s high level of family engagement.

We urged our beta testers to follow Ginsburg’s example and contact their kids’ schools and specify that they prefer to have their partner contacted first in the future. We suggested asking administrators to log this request in students’ files.

But new research suggests efforts like these, and more broadly, BLLx’s focus on families taking action to redistribute household labor, will not be enough to challenge gender bias at its source.

We’re asking you, our readers and beta testers, to help us think bigger: How do we broaden our focus from the family to society? How can we act collectively, rather than just as individuals? And ultimately, how can we challenge the institutions that are the biggest sources of our unbearable mental loads?

A new study finds that the problem of schools calling moms by default continues, and that even specifically asking schools to call Dad may not be enough to get them to do so. The study by economists Kristy Buzard, Laura K. Gee and Olga Stoddard uses a large-scale experiment, an “audit,” to test school principals’ calling practices when they receive emails from two-parent families requesting a call back.

In emails to over 80,000 school principals across the country, the researchers posed as members of a two-parent household where both parents worked full time, inquiring about enrolling their children. The researchers varied which parent the email came from. In some of the emails, researchers provided the contact info for a female and male parent, without specifying which parent they’d prefer to have contacted. They sometimes included instructions indicating that one parent was more available than the other.

They found that when the principals called a parent, mothers were 1.4 times more likely to receive the first call. More troubling, “[E]ven when fathers signal that they are more available, mothers still get 26 percent of the calls. Strikingly, even when the email comes from the father and he signals his availability, 12 percent of the calls are still directed to mothers.” They conclude that, “This underscores a ceiling on the degree to which informational signals can mitigate gender inequality in external demands for parental involvement.” In other words, no matter what families do to redirect demands from mothers to fathers, even directly asking that dad be the first point of contact, institutions will tend to reinforce the gendered division of labor that presumes men are primary paid breadwinners and women primary unpaid caregivers.

This is a pattern with larger consequences. The researchers cite past research showing that “35 percent of mothers report experiencing a household interruption during their workday, compared to 20 percent of fathers.” Those researchers attribute a nine percent wage penalty to these interruptions. Undoubtedly the stream of phone calls from schools are contributing to the disproportionate burden of unpaid labor moms do. This is one of many examples of that mental load coming not necessarily from a woman’s partner, but from an institution she has little power to control, even when she proactively calls the school to redirect them. The researchers agree, arguing, “The school setting is only one of many domains where gender differences in external demands on parents’ time lead to disproportionate workday interruptions for mothers.”

The findings show us that the proactive efforts of either individual men or women may not be able to correct an institution's practices; even egalitarian-minded couples can’t stem the tide of gender bias and the mental load, if institutions like schools continue to place disproportionate mental load burdens on women.

Experiment No. 35 is simple: If schools are only one among many settings placing external demands on moms, what are some of the others? We want to hear from you! Is it your kids’ doctor’s office? Your family accountant? The child care center? Your church or community?

Take a few minutes to fill out this form.

Then, we want to use our network and our research resources to work toward solutions—collective solutions we’ll engage you to pursue. How can we reduce the unbearable mental load households face, not just by shifting labor from one parent to another, but by eliminating much of the unnecessary mental load put on parents all together?

The research shows couples can work together and with their children to find a fairer and healthier balance at home, but until our institutions are transformed to reflect a culture of gender equality and equal parenting, there are limits to what we can achieve as individuals. Write to us and let us know where you think we should focus this next phase of our research and our solutions design. If you’re up for it, we may want to contact you to interview you and learn more from your experience. Like you, we cannot do it alone!