Скачать или смотреть The Digital Sticky Floor: How Remote Work Reinforces Gender Inequality

How remote work, often promoted for gender equality, can act as a digital sticky floor, reinforcing traditional gender roles and penalizing women professionally.
Key arguments based on empirical research:
Flexibility policies amplify, rather than solve, pre-existing gender inequalities.
Flexible Location (Telecommuting):
Does not significantly alter the division of general housework.
Childcare division changes based on gender role attitudes: Egalitarian men and traditional women increase their share, while egalitarian women do not.
Flexible Time (Schedule Control):
Men use it to work more, leading to higher work-to-life conflict.
Women experience higher life-to-work conflict as domestic duties intrude on professional time.
Professional Penalty: Men use flexibility to increase paid work hours, while women use it to accommodate unpaid labor, maintaining the gendered division of work.

Summarizes that remote work, often presented as a tool for gender equality, can function as a digital sticky floor, reinforcing traditional gender roles and professional penalties, particularly for women. The main claim is that flexibility policies, when introduced into a system with unequal gender roles, exacerbate gender inequality by acting as an amplifier for pre-existing norms. The logic is based on empirical research, specifically longitudinal data tracking individuals' behavior after gaining access to flexible work arrangements. The analysis focuses on two types of flexibility: flexible location (where work is done) and flexible time (when work is done). Regarding flexible location, the research shows that access to telecommuting did not fundamentally change the division of general housework. For childcare, men with egalitarian gender role attitudes (GRA) increased their contribution when working from home, using proximity as an opportunity to enact their values. Conversely, women with traditional GRA increased their share of childcare, using flexibility to expand their caregiving role. Women with egalitarian GRA did not significantly increase their share, suggesting they used their ideology as a boundary. The overall finding is that flexibility is not an inherent equalizing force but an accelerant: it promotes equity in egalitarian households and reinforces the status quo in traditional ones. Regarding flexible time, the logic is rooted in border and boundary theory, where schedule control increases the permeability of boundaries, leading to role overload and work-life conflict. Men with schedule control experience higher work-to-life conflict because they use flexibility to work more, conforming to the ideal worker norm. Women with flex-a-time report substantially higher life-to-work conflict because the home-to-work boundary is more permeable, allowing the cognitive load of domestic duties to intrude on professional time. Women primarily responsible for housework face the highest life-to-work conflict, as the burden of unpaid labor negates the benefit of schedule control. The professional penalty is observed in working hours: men use schedule control to intensify paid labor (working more hours), while women's paid work hours remain similar, indicating they use flexibility to accommodate and intensify unpaid labor, thus maintaining the gendered division of work.