GW Researchers Find Remote Work Is A Double-Edged Sword for Women’s Career Equality

Newswise — Women in the workplace fight inequality on many fronts, whether it be for equal pay or promotion parity. Now, where a woman works may be another issue driving gender inequality.  

Remote work grew in popularity when COVID-19 forced lockdowns across the globe. Working virtually has as many advantages as it does disadvantages; but, for women especially, researchers at the George Washington University are finding virtual work can harm a woman’s career as much as it can help it.

In one of the first studies to comprehensively review research on the effects of virtual work for women, Isabel Villamor, a recent PhD graduate from the GW School of Business, and her PhD advisor and co-author, Dr. Sharon Hill, an associate professor of management at GW, found the following:

• While virtual work allows women more control over their work-nonwork boundaries, it also blurs the lines between those boundaries. The constant state of connectedness that comes with remote work not only interferes with family responsibilities when women should be logged off, but also interrupts work responsibilities when attending to family obligations.
• Remote work arrangements may offer women new opportunities for job growth—for example, the ability to accept career-enhancing global job assignments without having to relocate their families—but, they may also limit career advancement. The researchers found women are often hesitant to take advantage of more location-flexible work arrangements because they worry they’ll be stigmatized for seemingly prioritizing family over work. They may also turn down remote leadership and global roles because these positions tend to increase work-related travel, which is counter to the expectations of women to be available to meet family demands.
• Virtual work settings promote women’s social integration in the workplace while leading to their exclusion as well. The same technologies that increase social integration for women may also reduce their tendency to be viewed as leaders. Lean communication methods often contain fewer social cues to counter gender stereotypes, which may increase others’ stereotypical evaluations of women. Social media also makes it easier to form closed informal networks that exclude women.  

“The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the implementation of virtual work and exacerbated women’s career inequality in ways that are likely to have lasting effects for decades,” Villamor says. “Managers need to be aware of the unexpected adverse consequences that their virtuality-related policies — even though implemented with the best intentions — may have on certain groups of employees and proactively take steps to minimize them.” 

The study, "Virtuality at Work: A Doubled-Edged Sword for Women’s Career Equality?," was published in the journal Academy of Management Annals at the end of June.