Allison Daminger

Allison Daminger is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Allison’s research focuses on cognitive labor, or project management for the household. She has written about gender inequality for The Guardian and The Behavioral Scientist, and her work has been featured in venues such as the New York Times, the BBC, and Psychology Today. Her book Thinking Gender: Cognitive Labor in Family Life will publish with Princeton in 2024.

Allison’s research shows that cognitive labor – tasks like remembering when it’s time to schedule an oil change, deciding on a daycare center, and researching a new dishwasher – fall disproportionately on women, and that even egalitarians are often content with this inequality because they see it as a function of personality or circumstance rather than of gender norms. By providing new language and conceptual tools for those trying to understand ongoing imbalances, Daminger seeks to help us move towards a more equal household.