Leah Ruppanner
Fellow, Better Life Lab
Leah Ruppanner is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Melbourne and one of the Founding Directors of The Future of Work Lab & The Gender Equity Initiative. Her research has been cited in The New York Times, Washington Post, Vogue, Forbes and more.
Leah is committed to understanding how women’s unpaid work – the time they spend in housework, childcare and the mental load – impacts their ability to engage in employment, sleep and overall well-being. Given that we only have 24 hours a day, time spent in activities like housework and childcare is time that can’t be spent elsewhere like in employment, rest, or leisure.
As a Story Fellow, Ruppanner will be writing stories that bring to life insights from her forthcoming book Drained: Reduce your Mental Load to Do Less and Be More, which offers a new way to understand the mental load, beyond a to-do list. She will dedicate several episodes of her podcast MissPerceived on the institutional causes of our growing mental loads, as well as infrastructure and investments that can ease it. Ruppanner's goal is to tell stories to help women gain control over their time to spend it exactly as they wish – to create more meaning, love, abundance and joy in our lives.