Once revolutionary to women's participation in the tech workforce, working from home has lost some of its promise as women are taking on domestic labor, child care and their jobs simultaneously, Wired reported Feb. 8.
Years ago in the 1960s, Stephanie Shirley founded software company Freelance Programmers that allowed its employees to work from home, helping hire women who had been pushed out of the workforce through demands of child care and domestic labor. While this model increased the number of female employees Ms. Shirley could hire, it also meant that women had to accept they had to fulfill all their domestic duties on top of holding down a full-time job.
The pandemic created a similar situation. As workers retreated to their homes, women often found themselves having to multitask in two or three parallel roles to support the household and their employer. A 2021 report from Deloitte found that lack of work-life balance and increased responsibilities at home were key factors to women deciding to leave their jobs during the pandemic.
While Freelance Programmers' business model was innovative at the time, as more employees work under hybrid schedules, it's more difficult to solve women's involvement in the workforce through work from home alone. Creating incentives to ensure that women don't have to work two jobs simultaneously may help ease the burden instead.