Return to Office Mandates Work Against Working Women
Unlike most of the workforce, I have worked full-time from home for decades. I started my business at my kitchen table and have scaled it from my home office, patio, couch, and bedroom. My business is successful, and I have worked with thousands of clients. It seems unlikely that the outcome would have been any different if I had worked out of commercial office space. But, as you know, quite a few CEOs disagree with me.
At JP Morgan Chase, CEO Jamie Dimon thinks that remote work is for slackers. Salesforce’s Mark Benioff believes that creativity can only happen in person, in an office. And last week, I wrote about the anti-remote work stance of Farmers’ Raul Vargas. Finally, in an unintentionally ironic twist, tech CEOs, many of whose products and solutions enable remote working, are among the most vociferous within the world of RTO mandates.
What common characteristic do all of these executives share? You know the answer—they are all men. CNBC held its private CFO Council in New York a few months ago. Sallie Krawcheck, former CFO of Citi and founder of Ellevest, an investment platform that serves women clientele, was predictably yet unsurprisingly one of the few women leaders in attendance. She was quite blunt with the men in the room (most of whom likely had stay-at-home wives), telling them that “flexibility is the new currency” and warning them that rigid RTO policies will inhibit them from attracting and retaining talent.
The fact is that the pre-pandemic, primarily in-office working style worked for one segment of the workforce: men. Despite more college-educated women being in the workforce than at any time in history, the share of domestic labor women perform has increased. Domestic labor women perform is worth half a trillion dollars, yet, by design, it has no value in the free market. The system relies on free and cheap domestic labor, most of which women perform, and those in power want to keep the status quo.
The pandemic and the pivot to remote work did not free women from the burdens of unpaid labor, but it did afford them more time and flexibility. Whereas women’s labor is unvalued, time and flexibility are invaluable. Consider my client, a single mother who commuted for years from her home in New Jersey to an office in midtown Manhattan. After 3 years of remote work, she said she would never return to 5 days in the office, a 3-hour daily commute, and her weekly dry cleaning expense. With the flexibility of remote work, she can pick her kids up from daycare without being at the mercy of a train schedule, doesn’t decline 4:30 meetings, and has more leisure time than at any other point in her career, other than when she was single.
The very idea of the office is old-fashioned and has its roots in misogyny. We all know women who have been “mommy-tracked” or hit the glass ceiling, almost always due to having had children. The reality is that most women do not have partners who pick up the household slack—embracing WFH and providing women with flexibility results in happier, more engaged employees. CEOs who want to retain top talent and develop women leaders need to pay attention to this. WFH has few downsides and many, many benefits.