Not even remotely close: Work from home’s gender disparity

For some knowledge workers, the pandemic provided the welcome choice of working remotely with all the flexibility it entails. For others, working from home meant juggling professional life and family life. These workers somehow managed to work a full time job while taking on extra responsibilities such as home schooling, leading to higher cases of burnout or, in some instances, quitting their jobs altogether.

Kristin Luck, president of not for profit business analytics organisation ESOMAR, said the gender balance in these scenarios is significant. Seventy nine percent of men reported they had a positive experience working from home during the pandemic – double that of women (37pc), according to McKinsey.

Women take on the bulk of unpaid work globally

“Women on average do about 75pc of the world’s unpaid care work, the demands of which have obviously grown substantially during the pandemic,” explained Kirstin.

“When I say unpaid care work it’s taking care of kids, it’s cooking, it’s taking care of parents. Forty percent of mothers compared with 27 percent of fathers are the ones responsible for the home schooling and taking care of kids.”

She added: “If you look at how many hours a day, after spending even three hours a day on those tasks, that’s a considerable part time job on top of everything else that they’re doing working a fulltime job. So, it’s no wonder that women have chosen to exit [the workforce] at certain times.”

The economic impacts are clear: In the first year of the pandemic 54 million women left the workforce globally.

“There was a ‘Women in the Workplace’ study conducted [in 2020] by McKinsey and LeanIn.org[2]. Their assessment of the number of women that have left the workforce because of [the pandemic is] that global GDP will be US$1 trillion lower by 2030,” explained Kirstin.

‘Zoom fatigue’ is worse for women

There are other factors too. Zoom fatigue, much like imposter syndrome[3], is more likely to affect women.

“Harvard Business Review came out with a study around ‘Zoom fatigue’ and how it has accelerated depression and anxiety in people and the statistics were significantly larger for women, who feel they have got to put on a professional appearance at all times when working from home,” said Kristin.

Similarly, researchers from Stanford University asked over 10,000 participants to rate their fatigue and exhaustion following Zoom calls. They found that one in seven women reported feeling very or extremely fatigued after such calls compared to one in 20 men. Additionally, they found that women tend to have longer Zoom meetings with shorter breaks between meetings than men.

Employers can create more equitable remote working practices

So what are the solutions to giving women a better remote working experience?

Jeremy Johnson, co-founder and CEO of Andela, a software developer recruitment company with a focus on building remote teams, thinks there are some things that employers can do to improve the situation.

“In our talent network it has been harder to find more female software developers [during the pandemic] and we are also trying to address [this],” he said.

“We believe it creates a better environment for all of our employees and members of the network to have more gender balance. This is a material challenge the world is facing with remote work,” added Jeremy.

Ultimately, Kristin thinks that employer flexibility, better parental leave policies and more flexible work from home environments are key to addressing this issue.

“All of these things that we say benefit women, they benefit men as well. They allow men to be equal partners in that family experience.”

Main image: Web Summit