Female teleworking provides well-being, but not a work-life balance. Why?

Photo taken from cesa.edu.co

Despite the fact that women do feel well-being when they work remotely, they do not perceive a true work-life balance, as is the case with men under this modality, which increased after the 2020 pandemic, and about which concerns continue to be raised.

This was concluded by a study carried out by researchers from CESA and the National Consulting Center (CNC), and whose authors discussed details of this in the development of the panel 'Gender and stress, the hidden face of teleworking'.

In essence, the study, collected under the title Balance and teleworking, set out to analyze the dynamics generated by this work modality, but - above all - if there were differences in perceived well-being between genders. And one of the main conclusions is that the weight of the roles, which for years the sociocultural has assigned to men and women, is what truly determines this perception.

Stereotypes work against us

Indeed, what has happened is that culture and society have so strongly established certain structures that they have made the roles of both men and women almost invariable.

Often, when parents (mom and dad) take their young children to the doctor, it often happens that male or female doctors tend to address the mothers with their recommendations and diagnoses, in the same way that a mechanic addresses them when he takes the car to the shop.

“A man is the one who feeds his family,” says a link to the methamphetamine trafficking business in New Mexico to Walter White, a chemistry teacher who - plagued by cancer - immerses himself in crime to ensure the economic future of his family, in the series Breaking Bad on the Netflix platform. Can't they take care of the household chores and let the women be the ones to support him financially? Are fathers prevented from attending to the medical prescriptions for their children with the same rigor as mothers? Should car damage be a non-issue for women?

These are patterns, stereotypes in which variables such as childcare, household chores, work responsibilities, among many other things, also appear in the teleworking equation.

What the research suggests, as revealed in the panel, is that culture and society have so entrenched domestic burdens for women that they develop coping and resilience strategies to manage the multiple demands of personal and work life.

Image taken from cesa.edu.co

This balance between these two worlds does not exist for women; and yet, and although it may seem counterintuitive, what the 740 surveys conducted on men and women showed is that women report greater well-being.

For men, a good balance between life and work is crucial for their well-being. Thus, they feel that there is a relationship between well-being and work-life balance, while for women it is not significant. The mental load makes them not perceive balance because they always have an agenda in their mind that fills them with tasks and constitutes a blockage to their well-being. In other words, they perceive working from home as positive because of the possibility of having control over the countless details of that heavy agenda.

AI training needs to be monitored

According to CESA researcher Nathalie Peña, co-author, a study shows that the first 15 minutes after children arrive home from school are the most important to approach and learn about what they feel, what they are experiencing and how they are doing at school. A golden opportunity that the alternative of teleworking offers for mothers and fathers.

Fabricio Alarcón, from CNC and co-author (along with Carlos Lemoine), called attention to the frameworks through which organizations profile future or current collaborators, for teleworking or even for recruitment. And it is that under these stereotypes, we must take care of how the algorithms of artificial intelligence are being trained, which are being used today for these processes and which can carry inconvenient biases. “We must be careful that these imbalances are not reproduced with artificial intelligence,” he warned.

Another of the main conclusions is that people who have greater confidence in their technological skills tend to experience higher levels of well-being, suggesting that self-perception of ICT skills can help reduce the stress associated with this modality. This finding is particularly relevant for organizations that seek to improve the well-being of their employees by training their teams in digital skills.

And yet, the teleworking of those people who travel the world as they carry out their duties (digital nomads) reflects gaps. When equating the proportion (the same percentage) of men and women in this particular condition, the result is that for women these are households with children. This suggests that the burden of care remains persistent and greater for them.

The authors agree that a management approach based on trust and autonomy can be more effective than time control: companies that focus on productivity and not on the control of working time will achieve greater satisfaction and commitment in their employees. They also believe that teleworking can be a powerful tool to attract foreign talent, including digital nomads, to encourage foreign investment, and, in cities like Bogotá, to reduce commuting times.

Offering flexibility allows employees to spend more time on their personal relationships, which significantly improves their mental well-being, the research concludes.

Article taken from cesa.edu.co

https://www.cesa.edu.co/news/el-teletrabajo-femenino-da-bienestar-pero-no-un-balance-vida-trabajo-por-que/?fbclid=IwY2xjawG9n_FleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHbIFetLppHvEei8ApgfVE9cmGEQBteO1UMoRxSSqMKPFdyyB5GQFM0zgew_aem_Vvip4GqRAApT7_QqLPxH7g