| Popis: |
Many organisations are having to rapidly transition to full remote working in order to meet the requirements of the UK government social distancing measures in response to COVID-19 (lockdown). At the same time, closures of schools have greatly increased the care burden on families. For these reasons, uptake of the flexible working arrangements remote working and part-time working should increase as a result of lockdown. Flexible working is critical for providing access to the workplace for those with caring responsibilities. However, when flexible working is perceived as a lack of job commitment and unavailable in more senior roles, it can lead to worse gender equality outcomes. In the UK, much of the gender pay gap is explained by the disproportionate uptake of part-time working among women. Analysis shows that for many people who move into part-time work, their progression does not just slow down, it stops entirely. Women are more likely to carry out the majority of unpaid care work and so are more likely to reduce their working hours in response to the higher care burden. As a result, the lockdown period could lead to greater long-term negative consequences for women as the length of experience in paid work, particularly full-time work and overtime, are disproportionately rewarded in terms of pay and progression. However, this moment could present some opportunities to progress gender equality in three ways. Firstly, if the majority of employees work remotely in an organisation, this could reduce penalties for those who need to work remotely. Secondly, organisations will be forced to overcome barriers to the implementation of flexible working by developing the infrastructure to support remote working, and rapidly reconfiguring many roles to become suited to part-time and/or remote working. Meanwhile, employees will develop new working habits. Thirdly, the increased care burden and disproportionate representation of women in key worker roles may result in a subgroup of men taking on a greater share of the care work at home. This research aims to measure changes in flexible working uptake and understand the extent to which different factors influence whether flexible working leads to positive or negative career outcomes by gender. Limiting the scope to those in work, we will measure changes from before lockdown, during the lockdown and several months after to track changes and whether they are maintained. |
