Empathy: Is it Women’s Unpaid Second Job?

Empathy is having a leadership moment.

We talk about it in manager trainings. We write it into culture statements. We ask leaders to listen better, care more deeply, create psychological safety, support employee well-being, and bring humanity into the workplace.

And I believe in all of that.

But a recent Associations Now article, “How to Close the Empathy Gender Gap,” points to an uncomfortable question: What happens when empathy becomes expected from everyone in theory, but carried mostly by women in practice?

The article highlights research showing that women leaders are disproportionately managing what researchers call “caring tasks”—the emotional labor of hearing people out, absorbing anxiety, offering encouragement, noticing distress, and helping others process change. In other words, the invisible work of keeping people steady.

That work matters. It helps organizations function. It helps people feel seen. It helps teams move through uncertainty.

But when it is expected mostly from women, it becomes something else: an empathy tax.

Women leaders are often asked to be strong, strategic, decisive, collaborative, warm, available, emotionally intelligent, approachable, and endlessly patient. If they show empathy, they may be praised—but also quietly penalized for spending too much time on “people issues.” If they set boundaries, they may be labeled cold, unavailable, or not supportive enough.

That is the no-win leadership trap so many women know well.

And it is exactly why this conversation connects so closely to the heart of my book, Men in the Middle: Conversations to Gain Momentum with Gender Equity’s Silent Majority.

Gender equity will not move forward if women are the only ones expected to carry the conversation, the advocacy, the awareness, the emotional labor, and the cultural repair.

Male is a gender too. Anxiety, distress, concern during processing change, not feeling heard or seen don’t discern by gender. Men might talk about it less, but these experiences don’t skip them. I spend a lot time in my book talking about the impact of the “F” word – FEELINGS -- and how these impact decision making, even more than logic at times. Empathy is important because people need to process feelings, so that they can move out of paralysis and into performance.

That line is central to my work because too often gender equity is treated as a “women’s issue.” But when workplace empathy is gendered, it does not just hurt women. It limits men, too.

It sends men the message that care, compassion, and emotional steadiness are not central to their leadership identity. It suggests that the “real work” of leadership is strategy, execution, authority, and decision-making, while the emotional glue of the organization is someone else’s job.

But leadership has never been only about the spreadsheet, the strategy deck, or the org chart.

Leadership is also about trust.

It is about helping people make sense of change. It is about noticing who has gone quiet. It is about creating space for hard conversations before resentment turns into resistance. It is about asking better questions instead of making faster assumptions.

That work should not belong to women by default.

In Men in the Middle, I write about the importance of engaging the silent majority—especially men who may not see themselves as part of gender equity work but whose participation is essential. This empathy gap is a perfect example of why we need them in the conversation.

Not as rescuers.

Not as performative allies.

Not as people who need to feel guilty.

But as leaders, colleagues, partners, and humans who share responsibility for the culture they help create.

The question is not, “How do we make women better at setting boundaries?” That may be part of it, but it is not enough.

The better question is: “How do we build organizations where empathy is expected, practiced, modeled, measured, and rewarded across all leaders?”

That shift requires curiosity.

Instead of assuming the most empathetic person in the room will handle the emotional fallout, we can ask:

·      Who is doing the invisible work on this team?

·      Whose calendar is filled with the conversations that never show up in performance metrics?

·      Who gets rewarded for being strategic, and who gets relied on for being supportive?

·      Do men in our organization have permission—and expectation—to lead with care?

·      Are we recognizing emotional labor as real work, or are we benefiting from it while pretending it is simply someone’s personality?

These are not “soft” questions. They are culture questions. Retention questions. Burnout questions. Leadership pipeline questions.

Because when women leaders are carrying a disproportionate share of emotional labor, they are not simply being “nice.” They are spending time, energy, and leadership capacity doing work the organization needs but often fails to name.

And unnamed work is usually unrewarded work.

If organizations want empathy, stop treating it as a natural resource that women endlessly provide. Train for it. Hire for it. Model it. Measure it. Reward it. And distribute it.

That means senior leaders and boards could ask whether empathy is truly embedded in leadership expectations—or merely outsourced to the women who are already good at it.

It means men could be invited into conversations about care, connection, and emotional labor without shame or defensiveness. It means women don’t  have to choose between being compassionate and being taken seriously.

Most of all, it means we need to move from judgment to curiosity.

Curiosity asks: What am I not seeing?

Curiosity asks: Whose work has become invisible because they make it look easy?

Curiosity asks: What would change if empathy became a shared leadership responsibility instead of a gendered expectation?

That is where momentum begins.

Not with blame.

Not with another women-only conversation about burnout.

Not with telling women to simply set better boundaries while the system remains unchanged.

Momentum begins when more people—especially those in the middle—step into the conversation and ask, “What part of this culture am I helping to sustain, and what part can I help change?”

Empathy is not the problem. The problem is when empathy becomes unequally assigned, quietly expected, and unevenly rewarded. If we want healthier organizations, stronger leaders, and more inclusive cultures, we need to close the empathy gender gap.

And we do that by making care and culture everyone’s work.