A note from the WPS chair
July 2025
From WPS Chair Elisa Choi, MD
Kinkeeping and women’s gender disparities
Welcome to July, WPS! Recently, many of us gathered with families and loved ones for the fourth of July holiday. As you all celebrated together, though, did you wonder who took care of making all the arrangements for the gathering? The overwhelming likelihood is that the person (or people) responsible for all the behind the scenes details is a woman. It is almost always a woman who is the “responsible” one for managing the household. This person is the “kinkeeper.”
The term kinkeeping was first coined by sociologist Carolyn Rosenthal in her 1985 papers where it was noted that the kinkeeper in families was disproportionately women. Despite many advancements in gender equity, this role of kinkeeper is still primarily held by women. For working women, including women in medicine, this implicit obligation to perform the majority of the “unpaid labor” as “household leader” can have detrimental and corrosive effects on women’s professional advancement, can lead to emotional/physical exhaustion and burnout, and can hinder women’s advancement into leadership roles.
I share a personal anecdote that illustrates the deeply rooted and unconscious gender biased assumption of kinkeeper. Years ago, I was speaking with a male physician colleague, who was married to my woman physician friend. This male physician stated that he only had one job―his work as a physician―but he sympathized that his wife had to manage two jobs―her work as a physician, and her management of their household (which included several young children). All this was spoken unironically, and, unfortunately, without any insight or recognition of how this male physician himself was potentially perpetuating some downstream negative consequences for his wife (my woman physician friend).
Research examining the impact of remote work during the early COVID-19 pandemic days noted greater proportion of mothers who worked remotely experienced burnout, depression, anxiety and loneliness, compared to fathers who worked from home. While there are many positives to serving as a kinkeeper, especially if one volunteers to do this, it will be important to promote more shared responsibilities within households for kinkeeping, so that women’s disproportionate burden of the unpaid labor of this role do not persist.
I want to thank my fellow WPS friend and colleague Ankita Sagar, MD, for first introducing me to the concept of kinkeeping. I also look forward to performing some voluntary acts of kinkeeping myself, for our section, in forthcoming weeks!
Contact and connect with the WPS
Thank you to WPS members who enabled our governing council and section to fulfill our goals from last year of the 3 Cs (collaborations, connections, community) . This year, while sustaining those efforts, I am optimistic that our WPS can aim for the 5 As (“straight As”!): Action, Activism, Advancement, Advocacy, Achievement.
Best wishes for July!
Keep in touch with us by joining the WPS GroupMe chat, or email us at [email protected].
