The Mental Load Is Making Women's Sleep Suffer, Professor Says

You may have heard that, on average, women need 20 minutes more sleep than men a night. 

But one study has called the bedroom an “invisible workplace” for women, “in which women’s sleep needs are compromised by the unpaid physical and emotional labour necessary for the well-being and maintenance of their family”.

And another paper found that in countries with greater gender equality, both men and women get better shut-eye. 

It seems that even though women typically spend longer in bed than men, they’re not actually as well-rested.

Here, we spoke to Leah Ruppanner, a Professor of Sociology at the University of Melbourne and author of Drained, who co-wrote that second study, about why women may face such poor sleep, and what to do about it.

The mental load is a big factor

Prof Ruppanner pointed to a 2009 paper, which she said showed that “women protect men’s sleep from the interruption of children”, especially when the man is the breadwinner. 

She added that her research showed having the pressure of a family’s finances resting on one person’s shoulders could be tough on the primary earner, too.

“What we found was that living in a country where women are more... empowered in terms of employment, politics, economics, [and] labour force participation... [means] everyone sleeps better.

“And one of the arguments we make in that is [that] being a breadwinner is incredibly stressful,” potentially harming sleep.

But Prof Ruppanner said that women’s mental load seems to be a factor across the board. 

“In my research, some of the things I hear are: ‘I am up interrupted in the middle of the night because I’m thinking about what needs to be done for the next day, or whether I’ve forgotten something’. Or, you know, ‘my mental load carries into my sleep time’, and in part, that is because it’s boundary-less, it’s invisible, and it’s enduring...

“A lot of women talked about having interrupted sleep because of the mental load of everything that needed to be done for their work, family and life.” 

Harvard Health pointed out that women in midlife may be especially likely to face “sleep maintenance insomnia,” partly due to hormonal changes.

But Prof Ruppanner said that this is also the age in which women face the “sandwiching of care responsibilities to ageing parents, and the sandwiching of care responsibilities to dependents, to teenagers”.

So, while she said there’s “the hard science stuff about... sleep, biology and... circadian rhythms... there’s also a sociological side.

“The way in which our family dynamics are set up positions women to put their sleep at the bottom of the list and elevate men’s sleep, in part because women think about rest, recovery and sleep as being secondary to taking care of the family and making sure everyone else has everything they need.” 

How can women get better sleep?

There are some general science-backed tips to help people sleep faster and better. But when I asked Prof Ruppanner how to counteract these sociological effects, her first reply was simple: “Empower women. Empower women.” 

Secondly, the professor added, “I have this mental load audit right that comes in my book, Drained, that just came out, and what I’m asking people to do is start to think about their mental load across the eight mental load types.

“Start to identify it, start to name it, start to figure out when it’s crediting, start to figure out when it’s debiting. Start to figure out who’s doing it. Start to figure out who deserves it. Start to figure out when social norms make it heavy. Start to figure out how to align it with your dreams, your goals and your ambitions.” 

In general, she continued, women tend to feel “guilty” when prioritising their rest and mental wellbeing. But we’ve got to let that go, Prof Ruppanner said.

“Stop ruining rest with your mental load of all the things that need to be done, because we need to think about our mental load energy as precious and worthy of investment, both in terms of rest, but also financial, [and] also relational.”