Five years ago, when the COVID pandemic forced all non-essential workers to stay home, American families were swiftly forced to reorganize themselves.
Suddenly, they had no childcare, no school, and no support system to help them navigate an unprecedented moment in their lifetimes. But just as unexpectedly, parents and caregivers whose jobs could be performed remotely had something relatively novel: the ability to work from home.
For many mothers who could take advantage of remote work, it was a burden and blessing that ultimately became indispensable. Once their kids went back to daycare or school, the flexibility of working from home often meant they could better juggle the many demands on their time, including the disproportionate amount of housework they perform compared to their male partners.
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“There was a massive amount of efficiencies that happened in terms of managing lives during the pandemic, ironically,” says Susan MacKenty Brady, CEO of the Simmons University Institute for Inclusive Leadership.
Now, some business leaders, and even the president of the United States, are determined to roll back workplace flexibility.
In January, President Donald Trump declared that government employees would be required to return to their workplace. Last month, in a company town hall, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimond offered a profanity-laced explanation for why his employees had to work five days a week in-person again. Amazon and AT&T, among other companies, have also called employees back to the office.
Proponents say working in person full-time will boost productivity, but experts say that women will pay a unique price.
“It’s going to affect the advancement of women notably, because we got a taste for a bit of what we could do if we were given our own choices,” MacKenty Brady says.
A workplace ‘disconnect’
By 2023, women had finally rejoined the workforce at the same rate as men prior to the pandemic, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. But it took them 11 months longer than it took men to reach that milestone; women didn’t achieve their pre-pandemic employment level until childcare jobs also recovered.
Now it appears that many women rely on remote work to succeed at home and in their professional role. CNBC’s annual Women at Work survey recently found that about a quarter of respondents said their work-life balance had improved over the last year. They attributed the change primarily to having a more flexible schedule.
Of 700 women in the job market, the vast majority characterized their hunt as “very difficult,” largely because they’re unable to find remote or hybrid roles.
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Organizational psychologist Patricia Grabarek says the push to end flexible work reflects, in part, the prerogative of high-powered executives, many of whom are men, who can hire people to manage their households and lives (or delegate those tasks to a stay-at-home wife or partner). Their days are also filled with important meetings that they may prefer to happen in person.
As a result, what executives think work can and should look like often varies significantly from their employees’ needs, and how they best achieve productivity.
“There is this disconnect…for what the day-to-day looks like for employees,” says Grabarek, who is also the author of Leading for Wellness: How to Create a Team Culture Where Everyone Thrives.
The pressure-cooker of office vs. home
Along with that disconnect, there’s silence about the reality of ending remote work, particularly for women.
Reporting back to the office full-time doesn’t mean that home and community responsibilities suddenly disappear. There are still kids who need to be promptly picked up from after-school care, dogs that need walking, errands that must be run, doctors’ appointments that can’t be missed, and so on.
Whereas mothers (and fathers) could previously use time spent commuting on some of these tasks, now they’re back in their cars or riding public transportation. When flexibility vanishes, MacKenty Brady says the answer is often to buy more childcare. That only puts additional pressure on households to earn more to afford care while also creating fresh tension for mothers who feel spread thin.
MacKenty Brady says it’s rare to hear corporate leaders publicly acknowledge these pressures, even as their insistence on in-person work could actually diminish productivity and engagement by increasing stress and exhaustion.
MacKenty Brady believes that even if women aren’t vocally opposing return-to-work mandates, perhaps because they fear the repercussions of doing so, they also won’t tolerate the shift over the long term.
More than 1 in 5 of women surveyed by CNBC said they’d “seriously considered quitting” in recent months in an effort to reduce work stress and find a higher-paying job. Of the 8 percent of women who did quit, they cited improved work-life balance as the chief factor in their decision.
“People are feeling exhausted, they’re feeling burnt out.”
There’s no indication yet that significant numbers of women will drop out of the workforce, but Grabarek says that decreased flexibility may force women to step away from their jobs, just as they did during COVID.
The corporate trend against flexible work might also help explain the appeal of the so-called tradwife lifestyle, even for women who have no interest in the religious aspects of it.
“People are feeling exhausted, they’re feeling burnt out,” Grabarek says. “I think the idealism behind this freer seeming life, where you’re just able to focus on the simple thing, feels nice.”
MacKenty Brady doesn’t believe in pitting housewives against career women. But she does note that staying home may be the product of forces beyond a woman’s control.
“If a woman genuinely chooses a more traditional role because it aligns with her values and aspirations, that is her right and should be respected,” she says. “However, if societal pressures, romanticized nostalgia, or economic limitations are shaping that choice, then we must question whether it’s truly a choice at all.”
MacKenty Brady says that despite the emphasis on getting back to the office full-time, offering flexible work options is a no-brainer, because women are essential to the American workforce. In other words, alienating them is no strategy for a company’s financial success.
