MIT Sloan Management Review researchers polled more than 350 women in managerial roles: 81.6% spend at least 30% of their workweek on caring tasks. A look at the empathy tax, care fatigue, the imposter-syndrome numbers at the top, and what the evidence does and does not show.
MIT Sloan Management Review put a first number on the emotional work managers absorb: 81.6% of more than 350 women in managerial roles polled said at least 30% of their workweek goes to caring tasks, such as calming anxious colleagues. The evidence is early and self-reported, but the debate over invisible leadership work now has actual measurement attached to it.
In a research highlight published by MIT Sloan Management Review on June 8, 2026, a consulting manager takes a 7:30 p.m. call at her son’s soccer practice from an employee who felt “on the verge of quitting.” The same week, she answers texts sent at 2 a.m. from team members who cannot sleep amid corporate restructuring and AI uncertainty. On Sunday night, she sends encouragement notes before the workweek resumes. None of this appears on any performance review, and that is precisely the point the article’s authors are trying to shift.
The authors, Colleen Ammerman, director of the Race, Gender & Equity Initiative at Harvard Business School, and Deepa Purushothaman, an executive fellow at the school and founder of The Re.write, argue that emotional caretaking has moved from an incidental courtesy to a structural expectation of managerial work. What distinguishes their piece from a decade of vague “invisible work” commentary is a number. When they polled more than 350 professional women in managerial roles, 81.6% said they spend at least 30% of their workweek on caring tasks such as listening to colleagues’ anxieties, offering encouragement, or monitoring how people around them are feeling. In a five-day week, they note, that is more than a full business day’s worth of work, the equivalent of a part-time job layered on top of formal responsibilities.
The authors call the accumulated strain “care fatigue”: exhaustion from constantly absorbing other people’s stress and anxiety. (Photo: Pexels)
The Empathy Tax, Named
The authors attach vocabulary to the pattern. They call it the empathy tax or care tax: the invisible emotional toll women leaders pay when they shoulder most of an organization’s caring labor. The compounding strain gets its own term, care fatigue, which they define as exhaustion that stems from constantly absorbing people’s stress, frustration, and anxiety. Both terms were applied to data the authors gathered themselves, which is what moves this beyond the anecdote stage, though only partially, as discussed below.
In a five-day week, they note, that is more than a full business day’s worth of work, the equivalent of a part-time job layered on top of formal responsibilities.
The distribution is the political part. The MIT SMR article states plainly that the burden is shared unequally between men and women in leadership, with women carrying a disproportionate share of caring tasks, often at the expense of their own well-being. That imbalance matters because the work stays invisible: none of it shows up in performance metrics or role descriptions, yet it consumes measurable hours every single week.
What the Evidence Does Not Show
Honesty requires three caveats before this gets cited as economic fact. First, the poll is self-reported and covers only women, so there is no direct male comparison figure in the published numbers, only the authors’ characterization that the burden is unevenly distributed. Second, the survey description (more than 350 professional women in managerial roles) does not specify sampling methodology, so it should be read as structured testimony rather than a representative national estimate. Third, the authors themselves caution that compassion is a genuinely valuable leadership component: it raises trust, engagement, and resilience when employees feel supported. The tax is not caused by caring itself. It is caused by caring that is invisible, unbudgeted, and unequally assigned, and a reader should reject any claim that generalizes this survey into a dollar figure for the whole economy.
A Confidence Paradox at the Top
Separate data suggests the pressures run in both directions: leaders absorb their teams’ emotions while doubting their own authority. In Korn Ferry’s Workforce 2024 Global Insights Report, released June 6, 2024, 71% of U.S. CEOs reported experiencing symptoms of imposter syndrome in their role, and 65% of other senior executives said the same, compared with 33% of early-stage professionals. The survey, which CNBC reported was based on about 400 executives within a broader study of 10,000 global employees, contained an instructive contradiction: 85% of those CEOs simultaneously said they were totally competent in their role. Confidence in the work coexists with a crisis of confidence in the self, a combination that makes steadying everyone else both more expected and more draining.
Korn Ferry found 71% of U.S. CEOs report imposter-syndrome symptoms, even as 85% call themselves fully competent. (Photo: Pexels)
The Other Ledger: Decisions That Never Speed Up
One more measurement deserves a place here, with a clear caveat that it measures a different problem. West Monroe, the consulting firm, released research on January 27, 2026 based on more than 1,200 leaders, and 73% of them estimated their organizations lose up to 5% of annual revenue to slow decision-making and delayed execution, a cost the firm branded the “Slowness Tax.” The most cited contributor was not technology: managers pointed to excessive approval layers, unclear decision rights, and risk-averse leadership behavior. It is tempting to connect the empathy tax and the Slowness Tax into one tidy story of leadership failure, but no published evidence establishes that the two are linked, so treat them as parallel findings that both put a number on the unglamorous hours leaders actually spend.
The MIT SMR authors’ prescription is distributional, not therapeutic: caring work should be visible, named in role expectations, and assigned across leadership teams rather than defaulted to whoever answers the 2 a.m. text. For a reader aged 16 to 35 entering management or watching a first manager burn out, the practical test is simple: ask who on a team is designated to absorb the feelings, and whether that person’s promotion case accounts for it.
Second, the survey description (more than 350 professional women in managerial roles) does not specify sampling methodology, so it should be read as structured testimony rather than a representative national estimate.
Three things are worth watching. First, whether Ammerman and Purushothaman publish a follow-up with a male comparison sample, which would make the disparity claim properly measurable. Second, whether the empathy tax and care fatigue vocabulary migrates from commentary into HR policy, the way burnout and psychological safety did in earlier waves. Third, whether Korn Ferry updates the imposter-syndrome series beyond 2024, since its most striking number remains the 33% of early-career professionals who already doubt themselves before reaching any leadership tax bracket at all.
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Future Skills & Work
Future Skills & Work
