Balance the Scales at Home: Second-Chapter Women and the Mental Load

A client said something to me this morning that perfectly captured what Balance the Scales really means and she didn’t even realise she was doing it.

We were talking about raising her boys differently. Teaching them to cook, to clean, to pick up after themselves. Teaching them empathy. Teaching them to cry. Teaching them that women are not the default project managers of their lives.

Her husband was confused.

“Why are you making such a big deal about this?” he asked.

Her response was simple:
“The next generation of girls will not put up with what we’re putting up with. They expect a quid pro quo relationship. Not a mummy’s boy.”

But then she said something sharper and far more revealing.

“You don’t get to have it both ways. You don’t get to say you’ve worked all day and you’re tired, so you can’t cook or pick up the kids because you want to play golf and then expect applause for putting a wash on. Unless you’re doing 50% of this house the chores, the parenting, the financial contribution you don’t get to slack off and be taken care of. And you certainly don’t get a medal for basic competence.”

That is what balancing the scales looks like.

Not a hashtag, or a panel discussion. A recalibration of responsibility.

This year’s International Women’s Day theme (if you’re in Australia) asks us to confront structural inequality. And while we often look to boardrooms, parliaments and corporate pay gaps for evidence, we should also look at kitchens, school pick-ups and shared calendars.

Globally, women continue to perform the majority of unpaid care work. OECD data consistently shows women spend significantly more time on domestic labour than men, even when employed full time. In Australia, the pattern is the same. That invisible labour doesn’t just cost time. It costs energy, career progression, earning capacity, political participation and rest. It is the quiet tax on women’s lives.

And it compounds over decades.

By the time many women reach their forties, they are at the intersection of peak career responsibility and peak caregiving load. Children may still be at home. Parents may need support. Careers are demanding. Financial planning becomes urgent. Add peri-menopause into the mix, arriving like an uninvited auditor reviewing every life decision at 3am and tolerance drops sharply.

What once felt manageable begins to feel unsustainable.

This is not a midlife crisis.
It is midlife clarity.

Second-chapter women often experience a shift that is both biological and psychological. Hormones fluctuate. Energy becomes more finite. The ability to absorb imbalance without question disappears. What looked like “coping” begins to look like over-functioning. What felt like “being supportive” starts to feel like carrying the emotional and logistical load of an entire household.

The mental load is not imaginary. It is cognitive labour, planning, anticipating, remembering, organising. It shapes how women show up at work, how much ambition they can sustain, how much risk they are willing to take. When one partner is managing 80% of the invisible coordination of family life, it is not surprising that leadership aspirations begin to feel exhausting.

This matters beyond the home.

When we talk about global threats to women over the next five years; economic instability, political backlash on rights, rising online misogyny, we must also talk about what happens inside homes. Because leadership pipelines don’t collapse in boardrooms first. They collapse in kitchens, at 6pm, when one person is carrying 80% of the cognitive load and wondering why she’s exhausted.

Balancing the scales does not require burning down your marriage or resigning tomorrow.

For an exhausted woman, revolution looks like something smaller:

• A direct conversation about redistribution of labour.

• A shared calendar, not a default manager.

• A financial review that ensures independence, not dependency.

• Teaching sons competence and daughters standards.

• Refusing to praise men for participation that women are expected to perform without comment.

These are not domestic details. They are political acts.

Second-chapter power is not about becoming harder. It’s about becoming clearer.

Clear about what is fair and sustainable and clear about what you will and won’t carry anymore.

Over the next five years, the global landscape for women will shift. Economic pressures will intensify. Political narratives will polarise. Artificial intelligence and automation will reshape work. The women who thrive in that environment will not be the ones pushing through depletion. They will be the ones who have recalibrated early, who manage energy strategically, who share load equitably, who protect ambition from exhaustion.

Balancing the scales begins with honesty.

Honesty about the cognitive load, about resentment.

Honesty about capacity and honesty about the fact that fairness is not radical, it is rational.

We would, quite frankly, all be better leaders and probably more pleasant human beings, if the load were shared properly.

And when millions of women decide that “basic competence” is the baseline not a bonus, the next five years look very different.