Background: Despite formal advances in gender equality policy, employed women in many contemporary urban contexts continue to carry a disproportionate burden of domestic labour alongside their professional responsibilities — a phenomenon scholars have termed the "double burden" or "second shift."

Objective: This study explores how employed women in urban settings experience, navigate, and make meaning of the double burden of paid work and domestic responsibilities, and examines the structural and institutional factors that sustain gender inequity in the distribution of labour.

Method: An interpretive qualitative methodology was employed, conducting 30 in-depth semi-structured interviews with employed women aged 18–60 years in a fictionalised urban context. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis following Braun and Clarke's framework. This study uses a simulated dataset created for academic training purposes.

Key Results: Four primary themes emerged: (i) persistent unequal division of domestic labour; (ii) career constraints arising from the "maternal wall"; (iii) identity negotiation and role conflict; and (iv) inadequate institutional support and a policy-practice gap. Role conflict and guilt were the most pervasive experiential codes (n = 54 instances).