Authors: Rhea Manohar, MPH; Meghan Etsey, Chelsea Oppong, MS; Joanna Georgakas, MD on behalf of the AMWA Gender Equity Task Force

Academia rewards publications, grants, presentations and other visible markers of scholarly productivity. These accomplishments lead to increased prestige and career advancement opportunities. The less tangible, and often invisible, side of academia is not similarly rewarded (Guarino & Borden, 2017). The “invisible” labor of academia  includes mentoring students and junior colleagues, serving on committees, unpaid formal teaching, organizing departmental events, managing program and advising responsibilities, and emotionally supporting students from minority backgrounds. While the “visible” and “invisible” sides of academia are important for advancements and the future of medicine, they are not valued equally. Further, women take on a disproportionate amount of “invisible” labor. 

The gendered distribution of labor within academia has been well documented. One study reported that women serve on roughly 25% more committees than men and occupy a disproportionate share of time-consuming, low-prestige service roles (i.e., mentoring, committee support, community development)(Guarino & Borden, 2017). In broader workload studies, women faculty report spending more time on teaching, advising, and university service while men report more time on research—the work that is most rewarded by academia (Allen et al., 2023). Another study found that women, particularly at the associate level, on average devote a larger share of their professional time to service, and associate professors are especially vulnerable to becoming the default “caregivers” of the academy (Misra et al., 2021). The pandemic intensified these patterns with women faculty picking up additional mentoring and pastoral care burdens thereby becoming “professor moms,” while still juggling expanded caregiving at home, aggravating burnout and attrition risks (Docka-Filipek et al., 2023).

Invisible labor is representative of a larger structural pipeline problem. The academic bargain is asymmetrical as women faculty undertake a disproportionate share of this labor, with measurable consequences for career advancement, well-being, and institutional equity. Time spent serving the hospital through mentoring and community development is time not spent writing grant proposals, producing first-author publications, or networking. These activities are tightly correlated with promotion, salary increases, and leadership selection. When promotion committees discount service or treat it as “lesser” work, women’s cumulative productivity lags and promotion timelines lengthen, reducing representation in senior ranks. The impact is often compounded by  intersectional identities: women of color are called on more frequently to mentor students of shared identity and to serve on diversity initiatives (Misra et al., 2021). Additionally, for those who seek out research, funding, or additional career growth experiences, these opportunities are often harder to acquire or less supported by institutions compared to their male peers (Meiksins, 2024). Beyond careers, the hidden tax of invisible labor costs institutions in retention, institutional memory loss, and diminished morale when highly invested faculty leave. 

Addressing invisible labor requires shifting incentives, increasing transparency, equitable career growth opportunities, and redistributing work more equitably. The following are practical strategies for departments and institutions to close this systemic divide:

  1. Make service visible and count it. Create standardized service-reporting templates and require annual logs that feed directly into merit and promotion dossiers so service is documented and weighted appropriately (O’Meara et al., 2021). Departments that broaden promotion criteria to value mentoring, community-engaged scholarship, and educational leadership reduce the career penalty for doing this work.
  2. Equitable assignment and rotation of roles. Adopt transparent rules for committee assignments (e.g., term limits, rotation schedules, caps on consecutive service) and track who is assigned what. Data-driven assignment prevents the default “ask women first” pattern and spreads labor more evenly (Guarino & Borden, 2017).
  3. Compensate and reward service. Link service roles to tangible rewards, such as course releases, summer salary lines, internal seed grants, or teaching-load reductions. Where budgets allow, count sustained mentoring in merit raises or named awards, not just symbolic certificates (O’Meara et al., 2021).
  4. Build mentorship capacity. Instead of overloading a small set of senior women, invest in mentorship training, distributed mentoring models, and formal mentoring programs that expand the pool of recognized mentors (Cutter et al., 2024).
  5. Use data to hold units accountable. Regular workload audits and public dashboards let departments see disparities and measure progress. Accountability is key: goals without monitoring don’t change behavior (Misra et al., 2021).
  6. Normalize saying “no” and support boundary setting. Leadership should signal that declining non-essential service is acceptable, while offering alternative forms of recognition for those who continue to serve intensively (Docka-Filipek et al., 2023).

Invisible labor is not incidental to academia, rather it is an essential scaffolding that too often goes unrewarded and unequally distributed. Correcting this will not happen solely by exhortation; it requires structural change: transparent workload systems, promotion criteria that value care and mentorship, and concrete compensation strategies. For institutions committed to diversity and excellence, addressing the hidden tax of invisible labor is both a moral imperative and a pragmatic investment in retention, productivity, and the equitable distribution of opportunity. If universities want to keep the talented scholars who sustain them, then they must measure, reward, and rebalance the care work that keeps the academic enterprise alive.

References:

  1. Allen, T. D., Miller, M. H., French, K. A., Kim, E., & Centeno, G. (2023). Faculty Time Expenditure Across Research, Teaching, and Service: Do Gender Differences Persist?. Occupational health science, 1–14. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41542-023-00156-w/
  2. Cutter, C. M., Griffith, K. A., Settles, I. H., Stewart, A. J., Kerr, E. A., Feldman, E. L., & Jagsi, R. (2024). Gender Differences in Faculty Perceptions of Mentorship and Sponsorship. JAMA network open, 7(2), e2355663. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.55663
  3. Docka-Filipek, D., Draper, C., Snow, J., & Stone, L. B. (2023). ‘Professor Moms’ & ‘Hidden Service’ in Pandemic Times: Students Report Women Faculty more Supportive & Accommodating amid U.S. COVID Crisis Onset. Innovative higher education, 1–25. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10755-023-09652-x
  4. Guarino, C. M., & Borden, V. M. H. (2017). Faculty service loads and gender: Are women taking care of the academic family? Research in Higher Education, 58(6), 672–694. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-017-9454-2
  5. Meiksins, P. (2024, June 12). A history of gender bias at MIT. Society of Women Engineers. https://swe.org/magazine/the-exceptions/ 
  6. Misra, J., Kuvaeva, A., O’Meara, K., Culpepper, D., & Jaeger, A. (2021). Gendered and racialized perceptions of faculty workloads. Gender & Society, 35(3), 358–394. https://doi.org/10.1177/08912432211001387
  7. O’Meara, K., Culpepper, D., Misra, J., & Jaeger, A. (2021). Equity-Minded Faculty Workloads: What We Can and Should Do Now (ACE Report). American Council on Education. https://www.acenet.edu/Documents/Equity-Minded-Faculty-Workloads.pdf

About the Authors

Rhea Manohar, MPH, MS3

Rhea Manohar is a third year medical student from St. George’s University. She has a Masters in Public Health with a concentration in Maternal and Child Health from George Washington University Milken Institute of Public Health and a Bachelors of Science in Microbiology, Immunology, and Public Health from the University of Miami. She served as Co-VP of OB/GYN Education for St. George’s University’s Women in Medicine chapter in St. George, Grenada where she developed and implemented hands-on workshops to further reproductive health issues and bolstered medical students abilities to navigate physician-patient communication. Prior to medical school, she was a Research Associate for Fors Marsh Group, where she led qualitative and quantitative public health research and campaign development for federal agencies (e.g., CDC, NIH, DHHS, CPSC). She is also a member of the Gender Equity Task Force and Reproductive Health Coalition within the American Medical Women’s Association. When she is not pursuing medicine, you can find her reading, exploring artistic passions, and spending time connecting with friends and family.

Meghan Etsey, MS4

Meghan Etsey is a fourth year medical student from St. George’s University. She has a Bachelors of Arts in Biology and a Bachelors of Arts in Nutrition and Dietetics from Bluffton University in Bluffton, Ohio. She served as the President of the St. George’s University’s Women in Medicine chapter in St. George, Grenada where she expanded relationships with the community and worked towards educating women and helping the youth. She is also a member of the Gender Equity Task Force and Sex and Gender Health Collaborative Committees within the American Medical Women’s Association. When she is not pursuing medicine, you can find her with her friends and family on different road trips and adventures exploring the world. 

Chelsea Oppong, MS, MS3

Chelsea Oppong is a third year medical student at St. George’s University School of Medicine. She earned her Master’s degree in Medical Physiology from Case Western Reserve University and her Bachelor of Science in Biology from Georgia State University. She served as Vice President of the Program for Adolescent Mothers (PAM) under the Women in Medicine chapter at St. George’s, where she developed and led initiatives to promote the health and well-being of adolescent mothers in Grenada. She also serves on the Gender Equity Task Force and the Sex and Gender Health Collaborative Committees within the American Medical Women’s Association. Beyond medicine, Chelsea is passionate about mentoring aspiring minority students and enjoys spending her free time with family and friends, exploring new experiences, or relaxing with a favorite reality show or classic sitcom.

Joanna Georgakas, MD

Joanna Georgakas, MD, is a psychiatrist and a Clinical Fellow in Geriatric Psychiatry at Mass General Brigham in Boston, MA. Dr. Georgakas received her BA from Middlebury College, where she majored in Neuroscience and Gender, Feminist and Sexuality Studies. She earned her medical degree from the Alpert Medical School of Brown University and subsequently completed her psychiatry residency training at Brown, serving as Chief Resident. Dr. Georgakas’s academic work has focused on the “leaky pipeline” phenomenon for women in STEM fields and feminist science studies. She has been an active member of the American Medical Women’s Association (AMWA) since 2018, where her contributions include co-founding the Brown University AMWA chapter and serving on the AMWA Gender Equity Task Force. She also created the podcast series “ Doctor and ____: Multidimensional Women in Medicine” (now run by incredible students and called  “Our Voices, Our Future”) to elevate the narratives of women advancing gender equity in medicine. In recognition of her contributions, Dr. Georgakas was a recipient of the AMWA Eliza Chin Unsung Hero Award. 

Formatting, publication management, and editorial support for the AMWA GETF Blog by Vaishnavi J. Patel, DO