A view from the top: Why Trianon Scientific Communication addresses (also) the hidden value of women's work to make companies more sustainable and profitable
- Dr Audrey-Flore Ngomsik
- Apr 9
- 7 min read
Updated: Apr 10
Who We Are: Trianon Scientific Communication
For over two decades, Trianon Scientific Communication has been at the forefront of revolutionizing sustainability approaches for industries facing environmental challenges. As CSR strategists specializing in both environmental and social sustainability, we partner with executive leadership to embed corporate social responsibility at the core of business strategy.
Our foundational philosophy is simple yet powerful: "Your problem may not be sustainability itself, but sustainability is the solution." This insight has guided our unique approach to "making sustainability profitable" across diverse sectors.
Through executive training, operational greening, and developing environmental and social innovations, we accelerate carbon reduction while simultaneously enhancing profitability.
Trianon's expertise extends beyond decarbonization.
We actively promote leadership diversity as an essential component of effective and inclusive ecological transition. Our combination of technical expertise, inspirational capacity, and commitment to inclusion enables companies to reconcile sustainability with profitability in today's complex business landscape.
It is from this perspective that we examine one of the most overlooked aspects of both social sustainability and business performance: the hidden value of women's work.
The revelation of absence
When women stop working, the world notices.
On October 24, 2023, something amazing happened in Iceland. Approximately 100,000 women and non-binary people didn't go to work. They went on strike for a whole day.
The first time they've done this since 1975.[1]
Their absence from workplaces across the country delivered a powerful statement about the value of women’s value in the economy and the inequalities they continue to face.
They wanted everyone to see two big problems:
Women in some jobs still get paid 21% less than men for doing the same work
Over 40% of Icelandic women have experienced gender-based violence.
But these strikes show us something bigger too: how much society depends on women’s contributions, whether they’re paid or unpaid.
Women's work: the hidden pillar of society
Addressing the hidden value of women's work creates substantial business opportunities.
Women and girls handle over 75% of the world’s unpaid care tasks and form two-thirds of paid care workers. Every day, they dedicate 12.5 billion hours to unpaid care. It is enough to fill 1.4 million years of nonstop work. If this labor were paid at minimum wage, it would add $10.8 trillion yearly to the global economy, a value three times larger than the entire tech industry.
In developping nations, rural women often spend up to 14 hours daily on chores like cooking, cleaning, and childcare. Globally, 42% of women are blocked from paid jobs due to caregiving duties, compared to just 6% of men.
Most domestic workers worldwide are women (80% of 67 million), yet 90% lack social security, and over half face unlimited work hours with no legal protection.
These gaps highlight the urgent need to recognize and support caregiving as essential work.[2]
The money impact
When women work in paid jobs, good things happen:
Economies grow stronger;
Businesses become more diverse and successful;
Income gaps shrink;
Countries handle crises better;
In America alone, women's work adds $7.6 trillion to the country's money each year.
If all working American women took just one day off (like the Icelandic women did), the country would lose almost $21 billion in a single day![3]
In the UK alone, improvements in female participation between 2011–2023 contributed £6.2 billion annually to GDP, with potential growth reaching £43.5 billion by 2030 if progress continues.[4]
In Europe, women also play a crucial role in economic growth:
Closing the gender pay and participation gaps could elevate EU GDP per capita by 6.1–9.6% by 2050.[5]
Women's contribution to GDP in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) ranges from 38–43%, slightly above the global average of 36%. [6]
The gender employment gap cost Europe €390 billion in 2023, equivalent to 2.3% of the EU’s GDP.[7]
This shows how essential women work is to keeping economies running.
Beyond GDP: The uncounted contributions
Here's where things get really interesting. Conventional economic metrics overlook crucial value:
Beyond their paid jobs, women do tons of work that nobody pays them for:
Taking care of children
Looking after older family members
Cleaning homes
Cooking meals
Managing household needs
Planning family schedules and events (often called the “mental load”).
This work is super important for families and communities. But it doesn't count in a country's official money measurements.
How much is this unpaid work actually worth?
About $10.9 trillion worldwide in 2020.
That's more than twice the size of the entire global tech industry!
Just in America, if women got minimum wage for their unpaid work, they would have earned about $1.5 trillion in 2019.[8]
The uneven distribution of unpaid work: Health and career impacts on women
Women worldwide bear a disproportionate burden of unpaid labor, facing significant physical and mental health consequences.
Daily activities like cooking, cleaning, and lifting frequently result in physical strain, leading to chronic pain, injuries, and long-term health complications.
The mental health toll is equally concerning, with many women experiencing anxiety, depression, and burnout from managing constant responsibilities.
Despite their essential contributions to family functioning, many women report feeling undervalued and unappreciated for their efforts at home.
The invisible "mental load" compounds these challenges.
Women typically shoulder the responsibility of planning, organizing, and worrying about family needs such as remembering birthdays, scheduling appointments, monitoring household supplies, and anticipating others' needs.
This constant mental vigilance creates a never-ending cognitive burden that rarely receives acknowledgment.
Woman depressed
The global statistics are staggering.
Women collectively perform 12.5 billion hours of unpaid care work daily.
In the United States, women spend 4.5 hours on daily unpaid tasks compared to men's 2.8 hours.
Even in countries renowned for gender equality, such as Iceland, women still contribute more unpaid labor than men.
The disparity becomes even more pronounced in countries like Egypt, where women dedicate 5.4 hours daily to unpaid work while men average just 35 minutes.
Across Europe, the gender gap in unpaid work persists with varying intensity.
European Union women spend approximately 4 hours daily on unpaid care work, while men contribute about 2 hours, creating a consistent 2-hour daily gap.
Country-specific data reveals significant variations:
France shows women spending 3.7 hours on unpaid work versus men's 2.1 hours;
Italy demonstrates a wider gap with women at 4.6 hours compared to men's 1.5 hours; and
Germany reports women spending 4 hours while men contribute 2.5 hours.
Even the progressive Nordic countries maintain a gender gap of 1-1.5 hours daily.
Eastern European nations often display even larger disparities, with women in Poland, Romania, and Hungary typically investing 3-4 more hours daily in unpaid work than men.
These differences reflect complex factors including policy environments, cultural expectations, parental leave structures, childcare accessibility, and deeply embedded gender norms.
Countries with comprehensive family-friendly policies and robust childcare systems generally demonstrate smaller, though still persistent, gender gaps in unpaid labor.
The career implications of this unbalanced workload create another dimension of impact on women's wellbeing.
The extensive time devoted to unpaid domestic responsibilities often forces women to reduce work hours, decline promotions, or exit the workforce entirely.
This "motherhood penalty" results in diminished earning potential, reduced retirement savings, and limited career advancement.
Women frequently find themselves in a double bind, simultaneously judged for being insufficiently committed to either their careers or their families.
The resulting financial stress, combined with career frustration and frustrated ambitions, creates additional health risks including chronic stress, compromised immune function, and increased vulnerability to various health conditions.
The pressure to perform perfectly in both professional and domestic spheres leads many women to sacrifice self-care, sleep, and leisure time, essential components of maintaining physical and mental health.[9,10,11]
Another crucial distinction lies in the nature of these responsibilities.
Women's tasks, such as cooking, childcare, and cleaning, typically demand attention every day at specific times.
Meanwhile, men's traditional responsibilities, like lawn maintenance or household repairs, generally allow for greater flexibility and can often be postponed without immediate consequences.
Invisible labor at work: Another hidden value of women's work
The burden doesn’t stop at home.
In workplaces, women often take on “invisible labor”—tasks that are essential but go unnoticed or unrewarded:
Organizing team events or sending gifts for colleagues.
Taking meeting notes or tidying up shared spaces.
Providing emotional support to coworkers.
This kind of work helps build company culture but rarely leads to promotions or recognition. In fact:
Women are asked to do these tasks 44% more often than men.
When men perform these tasks, they’re seen as going “above and beyond” and are more likely to be rewarded.
This imbalance affects women’s career growth and contributes to the gender pay gap over time.[12]
The business case for change
Trianon Scientific Communication helps organizations implement proven strategies for addressing these imbalances:
Comprehensive family support policies that recognize caregiving across all genders
Workplace flexibility without career penalties
Recognition systems that value traditionally invisible contributions
Equal distribution of office housework and emotional labor
Leadership modeling of work-life integration
Organizations implementing these approaches report:
Reduced turnover costs
Improved talent acquisition
Enhanced innovation metrics
Stronger team performance
Greater organizational resilience
Iceland shows the way forward
When Icelandic women first went on strike in 1975, amazing things happened:
Five years later, Iceland elected its first woman presiden.
Iceland has now been ranked n°1, in the world for gender equality, for 14 straight years
The country has closed 91.2% of its gender gap (America is at about 75%; Europe is about 76%).
The 2023 strike was another big step toward complete equality. It showed how powerful collective action can be!
The path forward
Trianon Scientific Communication partners with forward-thinking organizations to create sustainable change:
Implementing evidence-based workplace policies that address both visible and invisible gender gaps.
Developing metrics that capture the full spectrum of organizational contributions.
Building cultures where unpaid labor is recognized, valued, and shared equitably.
When organizations acknowledge women's comprehensive contributions, both recognized and hidden, they create workplaces that are not only more equitable but demonstrably more innovative, resilient, and profitable.
The message from Iceland resonates clearly: women's work, in all its forms, is essential to organizational and economic success. Companies that recognize this reality gain significant competitive advantage in an increasingly complex global marketplace.
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