Flexibility Stigma and Gender Inequality among Remote Workers in the Post-Pandemic Era

• In Event: 50220 - Section on Organizations, Occupations, and Work Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 10: Remote Work

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic upended both work and family life, shifting work into the home for many Americans. Yet it remains an open question whether this structural shift had a consequent effect of decreasing entrenched stigmas towards flexible work arrangements, and if so, whether decreasing stigma was equally applied to men and women, and to fathers and mothers. To tease out the answers, in 2023 shortly after the return to normal, we conducted a survey experiment among 803 Americans that replicated a survey experiment originally conducted in 2014. Our results indicated that despite drastic changes in work arrangements during and beyond the pandemic period, flexibility stigma remains strong. At the same time, respondents were not more likely to negatively evaluate women who worked from home compared to men, or mothers compared to fathers. In fact, based on novels of measures of time-use and competence, women (vs. men) and mothers (vs. fathers) were viewed just as capable of managing home distractions while working from home as men, and no more likely to shift time from paid work to domestic matters like housework of caregiving. These findings suggests remote work is no longer viewed through a gendered frame in which women are assumed to be engaged in greater domestic work, and that motherhood may not have the same penalty in the workplace as it used to.

Authors

• Jennifer March Augustine, University of South Carolina-Columbia

• Laura Aufderheide Brashears, University of South Carolina

• Valerie Barron, University of South Carolina-Columbia