In America's return to the office, women are falling behind

Mint

3 days ago

America's return to the office is unfolding unevenly for men and women.
Five years ago, Covid-19 ushered in an era of widespread remote work. Since then, many workers have headed back to their cubicles—but surveys show more men have returned than women.
The gap reflects both women's preferences, but also the balance they are often striking between work and family demands, according to economists. More women than ever are working outside the home, but they are also likely to bear the biggest share of responsibilities for child care and chores.
Among employed men, 29% said they spent time working from home in 2024, down from 34% the prior year, according to a new Labor Department survey. For women, that figure stayed largely flat at 36%.
While the flexibility can be a big help for working parents, it also means women risk losing out on career advancement by working from home, according to researchers.
'It creates that barrier where they don't know who you are and why they should try not to lay you off," said Katt Guadarrama, a 31-year-old mother of three in Canby, Ore., who recently lost her remote human-resources job. Her husband works in person for a school. 'I wasn't able to show how good I could be at my job," she said.
Still, Guadarrama said she prefers working remotely, at least while her children—ages 4 to 9—are still young. She recently turned down an in-person offer with a $100,000 salary because she estimated she would lose about half her income for child care. The decision 'almost broke me," she said.
Labor Department data released in late June and drawn from an annual survey of 7,700 people measure what percentage of employed workers spent any amount of time working at home on an average day. The survey shows the remote-work gender gap waxing and waning in recent years, but also a consistent trend: The gap has been wider since the pandemic than it was beforehand.
A cooling white-collar labor market has reduced workers' work-from-anywhere leverage. Companies from Amazon.com to Alphabet's Google have ordered workers back to offices, saying it improves collaboration and efficiency. In a recent KPMG survey, 86% of chief executives polled said they planned to reward employees who come into the office with favorable assignments, raises or promotions.
Remote work has been a boon, particularly for mothers who have long paid a penalty in the workplace. 'The woman who thought she'd go on leave when she had her first or second child can now decide, 'Hell no, I can still earn money and work from home,' " said Claudia Goldin, a Harvard economist who studies women in the workforce.
A recent survey shows the gender gap in remote work has widened since the pandemic.
Economists think remote-work flexibility has helped more women join the labor force. But they also risk steep costs, including fewer promotion opportunities or chances to get hands-on guidance from colleagues. Women who don't work alongside their peers get less feedback on their work than similarly situated men, according to Emma Harrington, an assistant economics professor at the University of Virginia.
She co-authored research examining chat logs where software engineers review each other's code at a Fortune 500 company. The researchers found women are less inclined to ask questions while remote than their male peers.
'If you have workplaces where it's more likely men go in, and women work from home, does that mean some are getting left behind in terms of career progression? That's worrying," says Nicholas Bloom, a Stanford economist who studies remote work.
Bloom's own research has also found a widening work-from-home gender gap. A survey of 5,000 working-age adults in the U.S. each month he conducts with two other economists—Jose Maria Barrero of Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México and Steven J. Davis of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University—shows the difference between male and female remote-work rates is currently about 3.3 percentage points. This has doubled since 2022.
Christine Chen recently gave birth to her first child.
Their survey data also show that women consistently express more desire to work from home, by an average margin of 5 points in the past five years.
Christine Chen, 37, plans to start spending more time at home because she recently gave birth to her first child. She has a hybrid human-resources job in Chicago.
Being in the office helps her feel more visible and boosts her sense of morale, she said. She also finds meetings are better in person, since there are more chances to speak with colleagues immediately afterward to clear up any misunderstandings. But she is grateful she gets to strike a home-and-office balance.
'We go through so many transitions in life and we need that flexibility," she said.
Some people can benefit professionally from remote work, but these are most likely to be seasoned workers, said Federal Reserve economist Natalia Emanuel, who studies women and remote work. In their case, staying home can make it easier for them to focus on their most direct tasks, compared with things like mentorship demands that pop up in offices, she said.
'That takes time, effort and attention," Emanuel said. At the same time, she said, more senior workers' absence from the office can be detrimental for younger workers who need support.
Gabe Marans, with his family, is spending more time in the office while trying to maintain time with his children.
Many men are also looking for the right balance. Gabe Marans heads from his suburban New Jersey home to his job in New York City most weekdays, but he tries to limit his time in the office so that he will see his three children more. The 39-year-old, a vice chair at real-estate brokerage Savills, pads his schedule with extra work at home in the evening and between 4:30 a.m. and 5:30 a.m., before his children get up.
He said he benefited from more time with his family during the pandemic.
'I wasn't willing to give that part of my life up," Marans said.
Write to Te-Ping Chen at [e-mail]