After COVID-19: A Better World for Women?
The global pandemic has changed how we live and work on a massive scale. Many of those who still have jobs have transitioned to remote work. Employers have found ways for their employees to work from home. It hasn’t been seamless, but it is working. This normalization of remote work and flexible hours will hopefully change the workplace for the better, especially, for women.
In a 2017 study by Harvard Business Review, flexible hours ranked second in the list of benefits most valued by employees, topped only by health insurance. And with the rise of millennials — strong believers in work-life balance — the importance placed on flexibility and the option to sometimes work remotely will only increase.
According to the 2019 State of Remote Work report by Buffer, “remote work is not a trend — it’s here to stay. Of our respondents, 99% said they would like to work remotely at least some of the time for the rest of their careers.” In this same report, according to Hubstaff CEO, Dave Nevogt, companies also experience many benefits from remote work and work flexibility. “Businesses are continuing to embracing at least some form of remote work,” said Nevogt, “likely because they’ve experienced the benefits of greater productivity, less wasted time, and lower overhead firsthand.”
While both employers and employees can benefit from more flexible work hours and the ability to work remotely, these changes have the biggest impact on parents, and specifically, mothers. Studies have shown that mothers in the workplace are perceived as less competent and less committed, and experience a lower likelihood of hiring and promotions. Part of this comes from the fact that many mothers often must take time off or leave work early to care for children.
According to Harvard economist Claudia Goldin, many higher paying, higher stress jobs — lawyers, consultants, bankers — now require round-the-clock availability. And because of the demands of those jobs, oftentimes only one parent will work choose to keep this type of job, while the other takes a less demanding job. “It just so happens,” Goldin says, “that in most couples, if there’s a woman and a man, the woman takes the back seat.”
Even when women do remain at their high-intensity jobs, they are also significantly more likely to still own the bulk of responsibility at home. According to 2019 research from the American Bar Association, “experienced women lawyers bear a disproportionate brunt of responsibility for arranging for care, leaving work when needed by the child, children’s extracurricular activities, and evening and daytime childcare.” Of those surveyed, 54% of female lawyers said it is their full responsibility to arrange childcare, while only 1% of male lawyers said the same. Similarly, 35% of female lawyers had full responsibility to leave work to care for children, vs. only 4% of male lawyers.
When companies offer no flexibility, women are shamed or held back because of their perceived lack of commitment to the job due to sometimes needing to shift work schedules or work from home. And many women who could go on to be high earners are forced out of the workforce altogether.
The unique situation we find ourselves in today — with quarantines and safer-at-home policies in place across most of the country — is forcing employers to learn how to, in the immortal words of Tim Gunn, “Make it work.” Businesses are getting creative and are moving their technological capabilities forward. There has been a seismic shift towards the widespread use of programs like WebEx and Zoom. The recent shift has more than doubled the market value of Zoom in 2020. Jason Aten, Tech columnist at Inc. summed it up nicely: “the company (Zoom), which went public in April of last year, is currently worth more than the major airlines. All of them. The whole industry.”
While some think Zoom is overvalued and that the users they are gaining through this pandemic will not stick once everyone can go back to their offices. Royston Yang of The Motley Fool writes: “Even after COVID-19 subsides, companies and businesses may permanently alter the way they operate, thus speeding up the adoption of videoconferencing tools and software like those offered by Zoom. This structural change had already occurred before the onset of the pandemic but has been accelerated by the outbreak as many countries implement social distancing and self-isolation guidelines to curb the spread of the coronavirus.”
Increased flexibility, the normalization of working from home, the ability to shift working hours as your life demands, the lack of judgement by employers towards those who take advantage of these policies and technologies: all these will increase employee satisfaction and will allow women to combat some of the barriers and biases that hold them back in the workplace. Employers successfully taking advantage of modern technology during this pandemic shows us all that it can be done; we only hope now that we can take these lessons and systems with us and help make a better future for women.
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