Women struggle to separate their work and home lives when working remotely, researchers from Durham University Business School have confirmed.
Although remote work has been celebrated as a way of improving gender inequality by allowing more women to work flexibly, they are still being held back by an imbalance between work and their personal circumstances.
The research was conducted by Menghan Shen, a student of MSc Information Management at the University of Sheffield, and Dr Efpraxia Zamani, associate professor of information systems at Durham University Business School.
They found that women were much more likely to see a blurring between boundaries between work and family life. They were subject to regular distractions during work time, often increasing stress levels and making them less productive.
Men were more likely to consider work completely separately from their family time.
Remote working
However, the research also found that women were more likely to value being able to be present for their family, even during their work time. Men were less likely to attend to their family’s needs if this conflicted with their work schedule.
“The greater flexibility that working from home provides has empowered women to bridge much of the gender gap in the workplace,” said Dr Zamani.
“However, our findings show that there’s still a need for more shared responsibilities in the family home if we are to achieve true equality in both work and family life, as women currently are taking on a similar burden in work, but a greater burden at home.”
The research also highlighted some of the other negative impacts of working fully remotely, including feelings of alienation, low self-confidence, and an “out of sight, out of mind” mentality.
In order to manage their boundaries and wellbeing better, remote workers should receive access to tools and systems that support balance and productivity, they recommended.
Some remote workers could prefer flexible working patterns that accommodate personal and family life and ensure they can complete their work in the most effective way, they added.
According to flexible jobs platform Flexa, searches for fully-remote or remote-first roles increased by 11 percentage points during the first quarter of this year.
Another study of more than 900 managers found that they were 11% less likely to promote staff who worked entirely from home versus those who were completely office-based.
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