More Work for Mother 2.0

Sweden has parental-leave and sick-leave policies that other countries are still fighting for. Yet in 2025 and 2026, Malin Frithiofsson said, it went backwards, and women again took more of both. Researchers linked the shift to children falling ill less often. A heavy burden leaves room for couples to negotiate, and a light one defaults to the woman. "If one person can do it, the woman does it," said Malin, who builds and invests in women's health start-ups. Care AI promises exactly that lighter load, so Malin asked Greta Braun of Chalmers University of Technology whether it will push care back onto women.

Their title borrowed from More Work for Mother, a feminist book from the 1980s about technologies that promised to free mothers from unpaid work and did not. Laundry once took eight hours, Malin said. The washing machine was expected to free seven of them. Instead, standards of cleanliness rose, and washing moved from once a week to every day or every other day.

The pattern is already back. Malin's household leans on AI for emails from childcare and for juggling calendars, and there is more to check and redo as a result. Parents now also monitor their children's online lives and the systems meant to make things easier. There are simpler routes out of unpaid work than new technology, Malin said, starting with men doing half.

Greta, who studies skill gaps in industry, asked what happens to the time a machine saves. A task that took four hours might take ten minutes with an AI assistant. The vision is leisure. What Greta sees instead is people filling the time with more tasks, becoming ever more productive and perfect.

Is equality not a part of your base right as a human being to be born equal to your peers? Or is it part of your economic value in a capitalist society?

Learning AI takes time too, and that is where women lose out. Asked by an audience member about unequal access, Greta pointed to Harvard Business Review research showing that women get more of the office housework and men more of the career-building tasks. Women tend to take parental leave in one long block, men often a day a week, so men keep up with change. Malin cited a study that found AI courses meant to close the gender gap backfired, because men signed up more than women. Malin wrote a piece proposing that men take half the parental leave and half the days off for sick children instead, since learning AI takes uninterrupted time. It drew death threats, sent by letter.

The deeper worries were about the work AI cannot do and the money it will move. The care most needed is embodied, from night feeds to bingo with an elderly grandfather. Malin also feared that by spreading expertise, AI removes the scarcity that gives workers bargaining power, and cited a recent Anthropic model of an extreme scenario for the US in 2030. In it unemployment is up 20%, and today's split of wealth, 60% to labour and 40% to capital, tips towards capital. The host urged caution about the source but said the incentive for companies on a free market is to cut headcount and raise margins, not to give workers time back.

Greta was more hopeful. For now, Greta said, AI creates more jobs than it cuts, and the question is who gets them. World Economic Forum studies found that women lost more jobs in the pandemic and were less likely to get them back. Greta sits on the steering board of the European Commission's Industry 5.0 community of practice, which is building a KPI framework to measure companies on flexible working, access to upskilling and psychological safety.

Even that work leans on the economic case, Greta said, because some people only listen to arguments for gender equality when they promise a return. Malin is always told to make that case to bring men on board, and luckily it is a strong one. "Is equality not a part of your base right as a human being to be born equal to your peers? Or is it part of your economic value in a capitalist society?" Malin asked. The two left it open, along with plans for more episodes of a podcast that does not yet exist.

Recorded live at The Drop 2026, hosted by Malin Frithiofsson, with Greta Braun.