For as long as I can remember, my mom has had a full-time profession but it wasn't until recently that I realized that she works not one, but two jobs. Like so many women across the country, my mom works the "second shift," a term coined by Arlie Hochschild, a sociologist at Berkeley in her book "The Second Shift."

The "double day" or second shift is a phenomenon where women hold a full-time job during the day and then come home to start another shift of unpaid housework and childcare. Hochschild interviewed 50 couples for her book to understand this frustrating scenario that working couples had to deal with and although her book was published over 28 years ago, much of the insight contained in the study remains relevant.

For the 25th anniversary of her book, Brigid Schulte, a writer for the Washington Post, interviewed Hochschild about the current dynamic for the working family and discovered that women are still doing, on average, twice as much housework and childcare as men, even if they are working full time.

Why do women work harder at home even if they work the same number of hours as men during their day job?

It's easy to say that men are the root of this problem and that traditionally, women have been the main caretakers for children because they are inherently more nurturing and attentive. However, this is not entirely true.

According to Hochschild, we are currently living in a stalled revolution where even though the number of women in the labor force has rapidly increased, the government, the workplace itself, and the men that these women come home to have not changed as fast. For example, the USA is one of the only countries that does not offer a reasonable amount (if any) of paid parental leave, while in countries like Singapore and South Korea, women have a week off. In addition, the long work hours demanded by companies in the workplace put more pressure on families, as parents have less time to spend at home.

But long hours do not affect both men and women equally, as shown by research on Australian families. After analyzing the data collected from 765 Australian couples, Lyn Craig, a sociologist at the University of New South Wales, found that men who work long hours cause their wives to be more stressed, but the same effect does not hold true on men when women work longer hours. Craig believes this is because "women have the responsibility to make the family work around the male job." As a result, women tend to dedicate more time into taking care of the house and kids, shifting the family dynamic from dividing the work equally among both partners to women taking on both a professional and domestic job.

To me, the double shift is absolutely ridiculous but a harsh reality that still plagues most working women. However, like Hochschild, I am optimistic about the future of women in the workforce because of the amount of progress than females have already made. With the right legislation and the absorption of the shock of female upward mobility, the second shift can be eradicated and an issue only mentioned in the future generation's textbooks in history class.