Career Women, Double Burden, and Gendered Structures in Feminist Sociological Perspective

Abstrak

This article presents a conceptual discussion of dual burdens experienced by career women in carrying out professional duties alongside domestic responsibilities, examined through a feminist sociological perspective. It outlines how gender based division of labour, organisational norms built around an ideal worker model, and enduring cultural expectations regarding motherhood and femininity shape women’s everyday lives. The paper emphasises that the combination of paid employment and unpaid care work should be understood as a structural issue rather than a matter of individual time management. Attention is given to mental load, intra household power relations, class based differences in access to support, and the ambivalent effects of family friendly policies when organisational cultures remain masculine. By bringing together key insights from feminist sociology, the article offers a theoretical frame for understanding double burdens among career women and for guiding future empirical research and policy initiatives aimed at building more gender just arrangements between paid work and domestic care.