Title: Does Remote Work Hold Women Back?

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Brigid Bergin: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, sitting in for Brian this week. Welcome back, everyone. Now we're going to look at a new gender divide forming in the modern American workplace. Not long after the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered offices, companies wanted their workforce to return to their desks. While many have completely eliminated work-from-home policies, others implemented hybrid work, allowing employees to choose whether or not to go into the office each day.

According to The Wall Street Journal, women are often deciding to continue working from home while their male colleagues return to their cubicles. Joining me now to discuss this phenomenon playing out in our workplaces is Te-Ping Chen, Wall Street Journal work and work culture reporter. Her article on this topic is titled "In America's Return to the Office, Women Are Falling Behind." Te-Ping, welcome to WNYC.

Te-Ping Chen: Thanks for having me.

Brigid Bergin: I started introducing the topic of a gender divide in return to work, but bring us a little deeper into this issue. How large is America's return-to-office gender gap?

Te-Ping Chen: Sure, it is very much there. If you look at some of the government data, we can see that among men who are working, around 29% said that they spent time working from home on an average day last year, and that's a pretty notable 5 percentage point drop from the year prior, whereas for women, the percentage saying the same thing has stayed pretty flat at around 36%.

Brigid Bergin: Now, for some people, remote work isn't exactly new. People had the option before COVID. Is this trend a direct result of the pandemic?

Te-Ping Chen: Well, it's absolutely a result of the fact that during the pandemic, of course, work from home became much more of a broad cultural norm. We have definitely seen companies trying to get folks to go back to the office, but as you note, and as our article finds, if you look at survey data and actual data from the government as well, there is just this persistent gender gap where women both want to work from home more often and are also doing so at pretty strikingly different rates, and that has all kinds of downstream potential effects.

Brigid Bergin: That's interesting. Listeners, we want to bring you into the conversation. Have you noticed this gender divide on your team or in your workplace? Are you a working woman that decides to work from home despite your office reopening? What's preventing you from working on-site with your peers, managers, higher-ups? Is this a choice you're making because you feel more productive or maybe more comfortable from home, or is it a matter of convenience because you're juggling family life and your job, and childcare?

Has this decision had an effect on your career growth? Managers, tell us what you're thinking. Does your employee's preference for remaining at home impact your professional opinion of them? Is the lack of 'facetime' at the office a factor when deciding who gets to stay and maybe who gets laid off? Call or text us. The number is 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692.

You can call or text that number. Te-Ping, we've talked a lot about remote work and the disparities in remote work during the pandemic. Is this another instance where perhaps this is something that's impacting more white-collar workers, or are we seeing this at all levels in the American workforce? Obviously, not everyone was able to go remote during the pandemic.

Te-Ping Chen: Sure. No, we're absolutely talking about the categories of jobs that can be done remotely, right? Broadly speaking, yes, we'd be thinking more white-collar in that case.

Brigid Bergin: Why do you think it's women deciding to work from home more frequently than their male colleagues? Do you get a sense that it is the personal preference, or are there maybe more subtle societal factors that are making that decision less of a decision and just a necessity?

Te-Ping Chen: Yes. Well, I think there's a lot happening here. We do know, certainly, if you look at survey data, that women tend to want to work more from home than men do, and that's whether or not they have kids. There's that factor, but we also know that in families where women have children and there are responsibilities to deal with, whether it's child-rearing or chores, we know that those do tend disproportionately to fall on women, and so there's a real question of to what extent are women choosing to work from home more because it's a preference, and to what extent is it maybe also being more foisted on them in certain situations?

Brigid Bergin: Can you talk a little bit about the second half of the title in your piece, "Women are Falling Behind"? What has been the impact of remote work on the careers of women you spoke to for your reporting? How are they falling behind?

Te-Ping Chen: It's really going to vary depending on who you are and where you are in your career, but certainly if you look at remote work as a phenomenon, we know, again, looking at data, that people who are working remotely are going to be more subject to career penalties, whether it's a lack of mentorship or, as well, more potential exposure to layoffs, which was indeed the case for one worker who we spoke to who was remote and did feel like that was an issue that contributed to the fact that when there were layoffs, she was among those who were affected because she felt like she had not been really able to show people in person what an asset she was.

There's just a lot of context behind someone's behavior and work that if you don't get to see somebody, you might not really understand what they're bringing to the table, their investment in the job, other kinds of skills, and so certainly in her case, she felt like that was something that had hampered her. Also, though, depending on who you are, especially for more senior women, we know that there can be a lot of benefits for remote work, too.

This is true of more senior workers broadly, but it can allow you to really focus more, potentially have higher levels of productivity, and those are all also obviously great things that can have career advantages, too. There's different strands at play here. Absolutely, a lot of potential for, I think, career repercussions, but depending on where you are and especially if you're farther along in your career, potentially a lot of upside, too, and as well as greater ability to attend to family needs and all those other sorts of things, which are also, of course, really important in any worker's lives.

Brigid Bergin: Sure, and we have a listener who texted something that probably is familiar to what you reported on and what you heard in the reporting. The listener writes, "I'm an Executive Assistant or an EA at a major tech company and support multiple female VPs. I've been doing this job for years, and without fail, regardless of which partner's job is 'more demanding,' the female parent is always the one to stay home with a sick kid, drop kids off at camp, et cetera.

"The primary parent paradox doesn't seem to go away at a high level. There's a lot of guilt I've seen from moms who want to be there for their kids despite working hours, working more hours than ever." That's one of our listeners, and another has called in, Alan in Chelsea. You're on WNYC.

Alan: Hi. I want to agree completely with the previous caller/writer. I was the Chief Human Resource Officer for my company, and a lot of times, the company was blamed for the fact that women and men that were married but without children basically were elevated at the same level until they had children. Once they had children, it became very different. The work that was split up between them mostly fell to the women, and that then hurt the women's career, because if you were at work, that was always kind of a better thing for the company than as if you were remote.

Men claim that they do 50%, but they don't. 80% or something like that falls to the women: the shopping, the cooking, the taking the kids to school, the going to meet with the teacher, taking the kid to the doctor. If those fall on the women, then they have to stay with remote work in order to service their family, in order to raise a healthy family.

Brigid Bergin: Alan, thank you for that call. I want to invite some of our other listeners, and particularly any women who are maybe working from home and listening. What made you make the decision to work from home, and how has it affected your career? Is it because you're trying to juggle the work-life balance, some of what Alan was talking about, or are there other factors?

Is it just more productive for you to be home? Is it, here in New York City, cutting out the commute that I was just talking about with my previous guest, Stephen Nessen, that's part of the decision? Let us know how you've made the decision to work from home. Managers, if you're listening, does your employee's preference influence how you think about that worker? The number is 212-433-WNYC.

That's 212-433-9692. Te-Ping, last year, the International Monetary Fund published its analysis that argues work from home has many benefits, including increased productivity, that attractiveness of employment, plus savings for companies that spend less on office space. Why do companies prefer their employees to return to the office in spite of all of that?

Te-Ping Chen: Sure. Well, I think, as much as the culture did shift during the pandemic, there is a strong sense that "I need to see you to know that you're working." I think that culture does certainly exist still in a lot of companies, and I think as well, you'll talk to companies that genuinely, apart from all of those benefits that you just outlined, do feel like there is something lost when people don't see each other that often.

You're not getting to run into folk casually in the halls or in the break room. There's just some of that degree of what you'll hear people invoke as "the serendipity of the workplace," right? Whether it comes to helping workers connect across projects or identify new opportunities or just have a better feeling, too, of connection in the workplace, which is something that also is a real issue post-pandemic.

We know that there has been a greater sense, in survey data, of loneliness, right? In American culture, as well as in the workplace, these are all things that, when you speak to company leaders, they're often trying to mediate against. Look, at the end of the day, you'll be paying the same amount for your office space regardless of whether or not people are coming in one day a week or three, or five.

Yes, I think for some reason, that reality does also bite because, look, you might feel, "I'm paying a good bit of money, especially in New York, for an office that is frankly not being utilized that much, and I'd maybe like to see a change." I would say as well, in terms of on the other side of the ledger with benefits to remote work, one thing that we hadn't touched on quite so much yet, but is definitely, I think, at play too, is in addition to the benefits for women and workers broadly with remote work that you talked about, for a lot of women, too, remote work is going to enable you to stay in the labor force, just period.

Because if you are a recent mom or have young kids, these kinds of working arrangements can maybe facilitate your ability to cover that last hour of a gap in care if you need to run to grab your kids from school or go down to the bus stop or what have you. These are all things that actually can meaningfully impact someone's decision to stay working as opposed to going part-time or maybe just dropping it altogether.

Even if we are talking about a situation where potentially once you are in the job, you're maybe not advancing quite as fast as you would if you were in office, but if at the end of the day, you are in the workforce, for a lot of families, obviously, that that is a really, really strong, great thing.

Brigid Bergin: We have a listener who texted something that I'm wondering if you have data on. The listener writes, "I worry that the trend of women working from home could potentially perpetuate gender pay disparity, giving employers another 'excuse' to justify the pay gap." Were you seeing any of that in your reporting?

Te-Ping Chen: Yes. I think that's harder to look at. We know, obviously, the pay gap is real. We also know that this work-from-home gap is there. I think it's harder just to see literally how that costs out per se, our work or not, but look, we do know that remote work is something that can limit your advancement in your career. We also know that I think one area of concern in particular for economists as well as people who study the workplace, something that they think about is the fact that for early career workers in particular, that if you are working remotely and you are, as a consequence, not getting as much exposure to leadership and to the kind of mentoring that might enable further opportunities down the line, that that can really yield a lot of, later in life, sorts of maybe you have less earning potential, maybe you're not getting moved up as quickly.

If we see younger women and women obviously broadly staying home more, missing out more on those opportunities, there is, of course, that I think very well-founded concern that there could be a sort of cycle, that this just would continue as a bit of a feedback loop. Something else that one of the economists that I was speaking to mentioned was, look, these kinds of relationships, like in a workplace, when you are going to learn from folk who have been there before, you're going to look up to, you're going to aspire, if, as a young worker, and especially a young female worker, you're looking up and trying to find those role models and learn from them and build those connections, look, if more of them are not literally in the office, that of course, has a lot of implications, too, down the line for your earning potential and potentially this gap and income that we're talking about.

Brigid Bergin: I want to bring in some of our listeners. Let's go to Phyllis in Morris Plains, New Jersey. Phyllis, you're on WNYC.

Phyllis: Hi. This is a subject that I think I wrestle with quite a bit. I have been working for 20 years in my career, seasoned, and I am currently in a role that is hybrid. It's two days a week, and I literally, as well as listening to you guys, just sent an email to a recruiter who had reached out to me for a job in New York City. It's four days a week. I met with them and I really like the role.

It's a career-enhancing opportunity, but ultimately I just sent them an email saying, "I understand that your policy, but for me personally, that's just not what I'm looking for right now." I also do believe that it is; it can be limiting. It's going to reduce the opportunities if I want to do other things with my career, because many companies and those opportunities are in New York City.

For me, it's the commute, and truly in a post-COVID environment, where I was the mom that I have children, commuted all the time. My children were in daycare from infancy basically until they were six, and I had mom guilt, like everyone does. I think when the pandemic hit and we were all forced at home, it changed things. I also believe that you can be absolutely productive.

Different companies make different choices. I think it's about leadership, and if you're going to bring people into the office, you have to almost make it worth it. "Show me." We hear a lot about it being about collaboration. "Show me what collaboration looks like. Show me the effectiveness of it." Because many, my peer sets and I observe it, happen to also be in HR, you see that they're just there to be there because they're told to and they want to be seen, but I think that companies have a lot more work to do to prove the efficacy, since during the pandemic, we were all forced home, and companies were still productive.

Brigid Bergin: Sure.

Phyllis: There's a discrepancy there for me, and like I said, I just make choices now. That's what I want to do.

Brigid Bergin: Phyllis, just to clarify, when you were saying that you just sent an email turning down a role that you were interested in, I think you meant to say, but I think I might have missed it, that part of the reason you turned it down was because it required you to be in the office five days a week. Is that correct?

Phyllis: Correct. The company it's four days a week, and they had asked me, even when they screened me, if I would be open, and I was transparent then. I said, "I'm not going to say no because I'm just exploring the position," but I upfront let them know. I said, "I don't believe in it. It's not my choice or preference." Then, now, as actually I've met the people in the role, I really like it, and they want me to meet more people.

I just sent them an email to them, saying, "I appreciate it, really like the team, understand the role, think it's amazing. It's just not for me because, I'm going to be honest, I can't take that commute." At the same time, they just emailed me back and said, "Can we talk about it? Are you open to [unintelligible 00:18:04]?" Right? Now they're trying to negotiate because I'm going to use that as my leverage, but I'm holding true, I guess, where my position is.

I'm holding true what I think is right for me, knowing full well that it will limit opportunities. It might even change my pay. Because if I'm looking for things that are-- I have noticed that roles that are fully remote or hybrid, sometimes, there is a little pay discrepancy. Yes.

Brigid Bergin: Phyllis, thank you so much for that call. Really fascinating, Te-Ping, to hear someone who is going through some of what you reported on, and then potentially may see a company who is willing to negotiate.

Te-Ping Chen: Yes, and I think we should also note, look, that when we are talking about remote work and its effect on workers' careers, we are also talking about, it's a management thing, right? It isn't as though remote work inherently is going to make people less promoted, promoted less frequently, et cetera, depending on the nature of the leadership of the company and how it's managed and the broader culture of people working remotely or not.

It could be something that really doesn't have so much of an impact on people's career. There is research out there that shows that some degree of hybrid work can be just as productive for workers and also not have those promotion impacts. We are talking about, fundamentally, human enterprise of work and the way that leaders actually manage these sorts of things and negotiate with prospective workers, and are willing to work with them, can really mean a lot on the ground.

Brigid Bergin: A listener wrote something very similar in a text. "Guy who worked from home here. I can say there's a very real cost to career development. However, the trade-off in the amount of life you get back and the increase in quality of life is huge. I think in the long run, work from home will proliferate, but managers got where they are using management techniques that were developed around in-person relationships, and until they phase out their roles, they will continue to pressure people back into the office because it's more comfortable and familiar for them to manage people that way." Underscoring your point there, Te-Ping. I want to bring in one more caller. Again, it's a little bit, flipping the script on the main bar of the conversation. Rob in Astoria, Queens, you're on WNYC.

Rob: Hi. I just wanted to tell you guys about the situation my wife and I have. We're both attorneys. She's in big law, and as such, it's very demanding but her salary is great. We decided that I would stay home two years ago when we had a kid and basically do most of the caretaking. Now she does work from home two days a week, but it can be nearly impossible for her to get a lot of work done sometimes, with the child around all the time.

Brigid Bergin: What's your dynamic in that role?

Rob: Oh, I work from home and I take care of our baby. It can be difficult working from home, taking care of the child at the same time, but we do have a nanny who comes and helps sometimes, so that's helpful, but I'm the primary caretaker. I do everything pretty much with the baby. My wife does talk about the mom guilt all the time, and it's back and forth. "Should I take a different job with less hours where I can be home more often, or should I stay at this job and continue to pursue my career and be successful in my life, et cetera?"

Brigid Bergin: Rob, thanks for that call, really appreciate it. Te-Ping, I think one of the things that's interesting there is, we've heard childcare come up a couple of times in these callers. How much of a factor is that in some of the decisions you heard from women?

Te-Ping Chen: Oh, childcare is huge, huge. Of course, it is. For so many families, it is everything, and you're hearing recognition in my voice because I have three very small children. Yes, this is life. We know that childcare, look, it is hugely expensive. The hours, even when you are lucky enough to find it for the under-five set, can be very limited. You're often left with bits and bobs of time that you have to get covered somehow, and you're scrambling, scrambling, scrambling.

If you look at the stats, we know that many, many women miss work or are reduced to part-time status because of childcare issues. Fundamentally, yes, if we are talking about a remote-work gap, we are also definitely talking about a childcare gap because, even if you do want to work full-time, show up in an office, if you have children who are young, it's just going to be very hard, unless, of course, if you have resources maybe to pay for an end-to-end solution and are lucky to have a standard 9:00 to 5:00, et cetera, et cetera, but yes, just a hugely hard equation.

Brigid Bergin: Te-Ping, when we talk about, as we heard, there are some of the men in there, how they fit into this when they're returning to the office, why are they more likely to make that commute into work each day compared to some of the women? Is there anything in your reporting that could help answer that question?

Te-Ping Chen: Well, speaking to workers broadly on this topic of childcare and remote work, over the years, one thing that has come up in conversations is that even when men are afforded the same abilities and can remote-work and can take the sick days, honestly, I've talked to men who really feel like they can't in the same way as women, that it's just more socially permissible in the same way that women maybe feel like they are the ones who always get that call from the daycare when someone's sick and they face those social pressures.

Men, too. The number of men I've talked to who have longer parental leaves than they're willing to take, that's a real thing, too, that people feel on both sides of the ledger that they are being hemmed in, women for feeling like they have to take on these responsibilities, and men who feel like in some ways that they have to maybe not step away as much as they sometimes would like because there is that social pressure to show up in a certain way that they have been showing up for many years in the workforce, and if they are that dad that is going to say, "Actually, you know what, I am going to take the long parental leave," that maybe there will be some judgment there.

I think, especially in this current economy, when we're talking about the white-collar job market, this is an environment where a lot of people are concerned about what their employment prospects will look like, and when you're dealing with that kind of situation, yes, of course, people are going to move maybe more conservatively, and that applies to men, too.

Brigid Bergin: We're going to sneak one more caller in. Let's go to Teresa in Midtown. Teresa, thanks for calling WNYC.

Teresa: Thank you. I'm going to speak from the opposite side of the coin. I am a working professional with no children, and I feel that we are getting the short end of the stick because we don't get time off for taking children to school or doctor, or the camp, or special things like that that are related to childcare. We're just working all day, so there's no way that the other person with the children is working the same amount of hours that I am, and I feel it's really unfair.

Brigid Bergin: Teresa, thanks for that perspective. We appreciate that. Te-Ping, I'm wondering any reaction to Teresa's that sense that we are all just working so much these days and how that affects a company's culture? When you see more people working in that way, does it force everyone to put their nose to the grindstone for even longer hours?

Te-Ping Chen: Yes, it's so hard, and I hear the frustration with those sentiments. I think it is absolutely something a lot of people do feel. I think at the same time, you would talk to a lot of working parents with maybe remote-work situations and kids who would feel like, "But I also log on at 9:00, and I'm working until 11:30." One father I spoke to for this piece, he was clocking on late at night, just like that, working and then waking up from 4:30 and 5:00 to 5:30, also putting in the extra hours before his kids woke up.

I think there is probably a sense of frustration on a lot of different fronts and a sense that they're not always being seen. I think it also, in some ways, echoes the frustration that we heard very clearly during the pandemic, when it felt like, "Well, why is remote work reserved for people who are able to remote-work?" Right? It's just hard. These sorts of themes and questions and privileges that are being given in workplaces are just really difficult for any company, I think, to figure out how to walk the line.

That's partly why I think we do see such fluctuations, too, because companies that have laid out policies and then walk them back, and this and that, they're trying to toggle through and adjust for a lot of different needs and preferences and feelings, and it's not easy.

Brigid Bergin: Sure. I'm going to sneak in another text. A listener wrote, "Remote work saves me money. Subway fare, lunch, avoids discomfort. Subway ride, cold temperatures in the office, formal clothing. These factors may have a greater impact for women. Saves time, no commute, less personal prep, and increases flexibility. Chores, exercise during lunch. At my workplace, the UN, there is no possibility for career advancement. It's merit-based or otherwise. All this leaves me with no motivating factor to report to the office despite an arbitrary requirement to work in person three days per week."

Some interesting work-from-home and work-from-the-office experiences there. We're going to leave it there for now. My guest has been Te-Ping Chen, Wall Street Journal work and work culture reporter. Her article on this is titled "In America's Return to the Office, Women Are Falling Behind." Te-Ping, thank you so much for joining me.

Te-Ping Chen: Thank you.

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