Busyness on the eve of the participation society. Social differences and trends in total time spent on paid and unpaid work in the Netherlands. Busyness on the eve of the participation society. Social differences and trends in total time spent on paid and unpaid work in the Netherlands. The Dutch government asks citizens to be involved in multiple domains in society, such as the labor market, in the care for others and in voluntary work. This often has to be combined with domestic labor and the care for children. In this study, we look at social differences and trends in the 'total workload', the sum of paid and unpaid work, including informal care for others and volunteering. Based on multivariate OLS models on the Dutch Time Use Surveys (1980-2011) we find that men have a higher total workload than women, especially in families with young children. The gap between men and women has increased since 1980. Moreover, we find that the highly educated have a higher workload than the lower educated since 1990-1995, whereas this was the other way around in the 80's.