Are you spinning multiple plates at once? Mother, wife, employee, cook, cleaner, project manager, taxi driver, home-school teacher? If it is actually possible for women to have it all – as society assures us it is – then why do we feel like we are failing? All over the world, women shoulder most of the responsibilities of parenting and managing a home, even when both partners are in paid employment. The better they do this job, the more invisible it becomes.

Many people understand neither the scale of this enormous job nor its value to the family. Failure to both recognise and value The Invisible Job is at the heart of the global gender imbalance. The process through which women take on The Invisible Job is so engrained in our conditioning that we barely notice it happening or even appreciate what it involves, especially the endless and thankless mental load of project-managing family responsibilities. In this eye-opening book, Paula Fyans takes a look at what The Invisible Job actually entails and examines how to prevent and address imbalance for these responsibilities in your own relationship, as well as in society as a whole.

The Invisible Job is essential listening for everyone, whether you are already struggling with it yourself, about to encounter it for the first time, or oblivious to (or curious about) the workload your partner is carrying. Paula Fyans has experienced The Invisible Job first-hand, both as a mother working full-time in an international career then and as a stay-at-home mother. Using her scientific background, the book combines extensive global research with insights from interviews with women across the UK and Ireland on their personal experience of The Invisible Job.