Could remote work be a new ‘Mommy Track’?
In what has been called a bright spot of the pandemic, the share of women in the workforce has reached an all-time high, partly because of the greater flexibility that remote working has brought, making it easier for mothers to do their jobs. Combine professional responsibilities with childcare.
But will the choice to work from home impact women’s careers in the long run?
My colleague Sarah Kessler recently wrote about how choosing remote work can make it harder for women to advance in their careers. Because office attendance is still often seen as a measure of productivity, working remotely full-time, or working from home more days than others do in a hybrid workplace, could become an updated version of the “mom journey,” a career path in which flexibility comes at the expense of missed opportunities for progress.
Sarah told me she started thinking about this topic after hearing business leaders complain that employees were taking a break around 5 p.m. to pick up their children from daycare and then reporting back in the evening to finish their work. In other words, some employers frowned on the flexibility of remote work.
“The modern workforce and traditional ideas of what hard work should look like are wrong,” Sarah said. “If companies hire both mothers and fathers, someone will have to leave their job in time to pick up the children. So why is it seen as such a bad thing?”
With the women’s movement in the 1970s, the share of women working in the United States began to rise rapidly, which continued through most of the 1990s. But then the pace slowed, even as it continued to rise in comparable countries; Economists have attributed the stagnation in the United States to the lack of family-friendly policies such as paid leave and subsidized child care, my colleague Claire Cain Miller reported.
Today, 77.7 percent of women between the ages of 25 and 54 in the United States are employed, a new high.
A lack of flexibility made it increasingly difficult for women to be available for their jobs at all times, as many employers expected, according to a legal theory published in 1989 by Joan C. Williams, a professor at the University of California Law San Francisco. For thirty years, Williams watched as technological advances made remote work easier, and she hoped, in vain, that it would change employers’ vision of the ideal employee.
Then the pandemic happened. Shutdown orders forced companies to experiment with remote work. Williams regained hope. “Now in a lot of professional jobs, the ideal employee is seen as someone who only shows up to work” – in person – “part time,” she told Sarah.
Some experts think there is an opportunity for professional workplaces to innovate the way they organize and evaluate work, Sarah told me. This would mean including assessments that are not based on who is in the office the most.
But many top executives have still said they believe remote work is lazy or not for leaders, Sarah said. Remote work may thus be re-imagined as something for less serious workers, as was the case before the pandemic.
“In that case, hybrid work policies could allow flexible options to become more widespread, but the work culture will still punish those who use them,” she said. “It could make it easier for mothers to stay in work or maintain a full-time job, but also make it harder for them to get ahead.”
If you read one story, let it be this one
A Czech reporter saw the highlights of San Francisco. Then he was robbed.
Where we travel to
Visit Geyserville, a salt-of-the-earth town in California’s wine country. In one weekend you can enjoy a 15-course menu, taste small-production wines and try on a cowboy hat.
And before you go: good news
The Oakland Zoo has a new, long-awaited star: A baby reticulated giraffe named Kendi was born last month, the first giraffe born at the zoo in more than a decade.
The calf, a female, was born Oct. 19 to a giraffe named Kijiji, which was brought to the Northern California Zoo from Kansas in 2020. Giraffes are considered critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, a nonprofit conservation organization. And reticulated giraffes are particularly vulnerable because urbanization and agriculture have reduced their native habitat and the illegal wildlife trade has reduced their numbers. The Bay Area News Group reports this.
The birth was a major milestone for the zoo, which partners with the Reticulated Giraffe Project in Kenya, an organization that works with African communities to strengthen their wild giraffe populations. The Oakland Zoo hopes Kendi and her mother will be ambassadors for the cause and remind zoo visitors of the threats to wild giraffes and the importance of protecting them.
With long toothpick legs and a short neck, Kendi is already a crowd favorite. And you can watch Kendi and her family on TV live giraffe camera from the zoo.
Thank you for reading. I’ll come back tomorrow. — Soumya
PS Here it is today’s mini crossword.
Maia Coleman and Briana Scalia contributed to California Today. You can reach the team via CAtoday@nytimes.com.
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