Multitasking is not biological
Breaking free from the mental tyranny of an assumption-laden “mom superpower”
“If I’m telling you that [humans] are not good at multitasking (what we’re good at is switching between tasks very quickly), and I’m telling you that all this work of multitasking is actually draining your energy, draining your brain, draining your capacity.
Then I tell you ‘hey, women are really good at this’, that means we’re putting one group — women — into this position of being drained constantly (or more significantly or more severely) by a gender myth. By something that isn’t even true.” – Dr. Leah Ruppanner, MissPerceived podcast
The goal of challenging narratives (and its cousins: assumption and stereotype) is to shake loose their hold over us1. The way we tend to accept them, use them, and perpetuate them without even realizing it. The way they feed our stress load.
Some day, sweeping policy changes will go into effect and universally decrease the stress load for all women. But that door is not exactly open in the US right now (at least at a federal level) so we gotta work with what we got… narrative change.
Narrative underlies key ways our brain internalizes our external world2. Narrative justifies the burdens we disproportionately take on. Narrative locks us into sacrificing our body and identity. Narrative change is more important than ever as a critical opportunity to keep moving forward against the current headwind3. If we can’t have universal child care, federal paid leave, health care access, or any of the effective policy measures that would support and protect women, maybe we can at least chip away at how we internalize the inevitable stressor exposure of the systems and structures that have failed us? (Bonus: narrative drives culture change and culture change can drive policy momentum so… maybe if we change the narrative we’ll be even more ready when that door opens again?)
When it comes to uneven distribution of labor in the home, one narrative/assumption/stereotype I hear repeated in various forms: “women are better at multitasking.”
[quick note: Dr. Leah Ruppaner did a fantastic multitasking myth busting episode on her podcast MissPerceived where she went through the research to show that the human brain, male or female, is not suited for multitasking in the most pure sense of the word. It is actually quick task-switching that we are doing. I will still use the word “multitasking” but keep this definition in mind.]
Ok, don’t get me wrong. Multitasking can be an incredible skill. If you are proud of your multitasking ability and worried that I am going to negate something you hold dear, stay with me for a second, the ability to multitask can still be a point of pride.
The problem with the statement “women are better at multitasking” is not in the “...better at multitasking” part, but in the general use of “women are…”.
Usually statements that start with “women are better at…” or “mothers are better at…” come down to assumptions about biology. Our brains. Our bodies. The way evolution drives the wedge to define a gender binary based on sex or sex hormones or sexual differentiation.
If you hold onto this belief, rest assured, you are not alone. A majority of people (over 80%) believe that women are better at multitasking for biological reasons4.
But the context of “biological truth” gets us into trouble. Instead of seeing multitasking as a learned skill, we see it as an innate feature that came with the body we were born into. And like most things that are assumed to be “biological”, it can quickly become an excuse to overburden women without offering additional support. Maternal instinct. Maternal sacrifice. Maternal caregiving. Women can handle it… it’s biological!
This is especially true for the way mental load + multitasking collide. The pervasiveness of the narrative has settled into our minds in a way that facilitates a tendency to take on more than we might want to (or are able to) and why it is so hard to shake off and/or redistribute tasks. This gets further ramped up when we add in the “good mother” narrative, mom guilt/shame and societal expectations, and fear of failure in the face of cultural pressures…
Here’s the crux of the problem: the “women are better at multitasking” narrative is not biologically true.
“But, Molly…” you may think, “I read about research showing that the female brain works differently in a way that makes us better at multitasking!”
Ok, yes. That is a counter response I hear a lot. I’ll take that bait. (I do love a good “research has shown…” provocation. It makes me think “Shit! Did I misspeak? Overstep my assertions?”)
This is where it gets fun. It’s rare to get the opportunity to track a stereotyping narrative back to a starting point. Tracing this one went straight into the world of basic research and botched scientific communication.
Here is the full spoiler alert of it all – Science, or rather science reporting, may be to blame for cementing this gender stereotype in our public discourse.5
In 2013, a neuroanatomy study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences revealed new insights about the neuroscience of sex differences in the human brain. The study was academic writing intended for other academics. It purely reported on anatomical differences in structural connectivity in the female versus male brain.
Nowhere in the write-up of the research, as published in PNAS, was there any suggestion for how these differences specifically related to behavior or “special skills” that broke along gender lines. It was the media coverage of that study that projected the biological determinism for those anatomical differences. A game of science communication telephone that snowballed far beyond academia, fuelling the widespread discussion of “women are better at…”/ ”men are better at…” and ending with a gender stereotype embedded in the broader social consciousness.
This game of telephone was brilliantly dissected by two researchers, Drs. Cliodhna O’Connor and Helene Joffe, from the Division of Psychology and Language Sciences at University College, London. In their 2014 article for PLOS One, the researchers set about tracking the conversion of the basic neuroscience research on sex differences to the public discussion of gender stereotypes. They reported the elaborate game of science communication telephone and how it slowly broke down the general findings of neuroanatomy research into the clean-lines of stereotyped behavioral framing. Tracing the line from academic publication to press release to media to blogs to comments and social discourse, the researchers found:
“[the reporting] usually enlisted the research to claim that women are ‘wired’ to notice and remediate household disarray, with men laughingly dismissed as ineffective contributors to domestic labour.”
Essentially, it was the media coverage that cemented gender stereotypes even though the original study did not examine anything that could link the anatomical differences to gendered traits. As O’Conner and Joffe point out:
“The research was represented as a vindication of the factual truth and normative legitimacy of gender stereotypes.”
While mothers felt validation in the reporting of the study across platforms, O’Conner and Joffe raised the concern:
“This content often resembled a form of benevolent sexism, in which praise of women’s social-emotional skills compensated for their relegation from more esteemed trait-domains, such as rationality and productivity.”
The world had a biological reason to expect women to multitask and disproportionately take on more of the emotional and cognitive labor in the home while sidelining their abilities beyond that skillset. After all, science showed the way:
“If neuroscience research on sex differences is mobilised to purvey complementary gender stereotypes, what implications might this have for wider society? Experimental social psychological research suggests that complementary stereotypes are effective mechanisms for obscuring gender inequality and inculcating acceptance of the systems that perpetuate it.” — O’Conner and Joffe, 2014
If you held this complimentary gender stereotype in your own brain up until this point, now is the time to shake it loose. Men are not from Mars. Women are not from Venus.
Relating this back to mental load, I keep thinking about a question that
prompted in our discussion about stress+mental load – “can we carry mental load without stress?”I have thoughts on what might convert mental load to stress load based on pulling together a few disparate dots from the limited research (explored in this series). I think a lot of it relates back to the types of tasks and the ways emotional labor gets all wrapped up in cognitive labor. I think it also relates to forward-thinking and the perceived consequences of failure in the context of modern motherhood pressures and expectations. Gender stereotypes and narratives are all tangled up in this.
With that said, the number of tasks and the types of tasks is also at play in how we carry a mental load without (or at least with less) stress6. And that is where the “women are better at…” and “moms are better at…” narrative sets a stronghold.
It can be hard to hand things off (and it can be hard for others to accept that we’re overloaded) when it is assumed that women are biologically programmed to take on more and be “better” at certain jobs. This assumption may be getting in the way of how we redistribute mental load tasks in our home7.
“This myth [that women are super-efficient multitaskers] is not supported by evidence. This means the extra family work women perform is just that – extra work. And we need to see it as such.” — Dr. Leah Ruppanner
In addition, this assumption-based narrative, locked into our own brain, could affect the way we feel about being overburdened. For example, the “I should be able to handle this” feeling. Unnecessary, untrue, and 100% counterproductive for decreasing our stress load.
What if I am pretty damn good at multitasking?
You are absolutely welcome to say “but I am pretty damn good at multitasking” and own that incredible superpower. For yourself. With everything I wrote above, I should acknowledge that there may be a wee bit of truth in women are better at multitasking BUT…
Any gender differences in multitasking are more likely a byproduct of *gendered* differences in multitasking. Women are better multitaskers because women are the ones expected to multitask. An acquired skill that we pick up because we are expected to pick it up. We are stuck in a self-perpetuating training program.
And this is a reason that “mom” or “primary parent” or “family caregiver” should be a valuable addition to a resume. You can (and should) be proud of that skill if you are proud of that skill. And (in an ideal, not sexist world) all workplaces would recognize the power of such a motherhood, household management, and caregiving “training program” and the acquired skills we master in these roles. You earned it. But remember – we aren’t innately better at multitasking/task-switching because our biologically female brain is structured in a certain way that makes this an internal given. We are better at it because we picked up the workload, did the thing, and trained on the job.
With that said, even feeling like you are a master multitasker should not be weaponized as a reason for women to take on more labor and more of the mental load in the home or in the workplace. Multi-tasking/task switching has a cost.
“Women’s brains are equally strained by multitasking [when compared to men’s brains], why do we keep asking women to do the work and, more importantly, what are the consequences? We keep asking women to multitask in all these areas of their lives because we think they can hold it all together better and at once than men, and we [we think women] are especially good at doing this around the care aspect.
But when we ask women to be mentally multitasking or in charge of all of this different stuff going on, what we see is that it impacts them: it fragments their leisure, it spills into their home life, it impacts their mental health and well-being” – Dr. Leah Ruppaner
Use this acquired skill where it best suits you. Don’t let others (even your inner psyche) take advantage of the false narrative of biological determinism.
On the psychological stress side of things, I see narrative change fitting into the small but impactful shifts category. Small shifts can affect the way we think about our external world and how we perpetuate those thoughts for others. Small shifts can affect how we internalize the stress related to the parenting journey. In order for our bodies to respond internally to our external world, information feeds through a sort of perception filter that guides our brain in defining what is and is not a stressor, and the best way to respond. The perception filter factors in a range of elements — context, personality, memory, forward-thinking. The narratives playing out in our mind have plenty of paths to invade the process.
I should also note, that I am not a psychologist, so I tend to gloss over the specifics of how the human brain works. If you are an expert in this and I'm totally off base, please let me know! So much of this project is a learning exercise for me!
Even if we have a new headwind with whatever the "womansphere" is serving up for us. I absolutely love this breakdown by
:For excellent myth busting writing focused on evolution-based narratives in motherhood/parenting, check out
excellent Substack Motherhood Until Yesterday.Also, another plug for Leah Ruppanner’s podcast episode where she goes through other research that explores the gender lines of multitasking ability. She also breaks it down in this essay for The Conversation.
As for solutions, specifically aimed at decreasing the disproportionate mental load that fall to women/mothers in the home, tools tend to focus on redistribution of tasks. Fair Play is an excellent example and an excellent tool for this.
Another resource — all things
. Her book Equal Partners highlights ways to have mental load redistribution conversation that starts with examining and addressing gender norms and expectations in the home. She (along with two awesome partners) also just launched a 1.5 day retreat/experience “for dual working couples who are thinking of starting a family, expecting their first, or navigating parenthood with a little one at home.”: