2024-03-07 16:19:29
Almost 4 years following the start of the global Covid-19 pandemic, during which teleworking particularly developed, theinvestigation of the Teleworking Observatory of the General Union of Engineers, Executives and Technicians of the CGT, published on December 6, allows us to take stock of the situation. It appears in particular that women are particularly adept at this form of work, even though it is less favorable for them.
More women than men want to telework more. Not surprising, since by reducing transport times, teleworking offers the prospect of a better articulation of professional and family time, the management of which rests mainly on the women who carry out the work. most of the domestic work before as during the pandemic.
But this aspiration of women to telework is also closely linked to the conditions for carrying out professional activity in person. On site, they benefit on average from less freedom in the organization of their working time, able less often than men to change their own schedules or to be absent in the event of an unforeseen event, including in equivalent positions. Teleworking thus promises them greater autonomy.
Finally, to the extent that they more often than men occupy professions in contact with the public and are more exposed to carrying out “emotional labor” with customers or colleagues, teleworking may appear to them even more than to men as a way to carve out work time with fewer interruptions and more concentration. More teleworkers than teleworkers consider that this form of work allows them to gain efficiency and better productivity, while being less sensitive than them to possible loss of information.
Teleworking, more restrictive for women
More desired by women, teleworking paradoxically remains more restrictive for women than for men. There are several reasons for this: women first have less latitude to assert their wishes and constraints in setting up their teleworking. The choices of the number of days of weekly teleworking and their distribution over the week are more often imposed on them than on men (24% for women and 13% for men).
Then, during a teleworking day, women are more often forced to respect fixed time slots during which they can be reached (53% compared to 41% of men), regardless of their hierarchical level. They can therefore take advantage of teleworking less easily than men to organize themselves by adapting their schedules (22% do not have the possibility compared to 12% of men). The consequences on the pace of work are also more unfavorable for them with denser work in teleworking – 46% of women take fewer breaks when teleworking than in person compared to 35% of men.
Conversely, if half of the respondents (both women and men) declare that they take advantage of the time saved in transport to devote it to rest and their family, men stand out by declaring more that teleworking allows them to devote time to their leisure activities. (44% of men compared to only 28% of women) and/or to work more (39% of men compared to 31% of women).
Teleworking therefore results in days for women not necessarily longer but more intenseespecially since they remain less well equipped by their companies and that they are more often affected than men by technical difficulties which make their activity less fluid and more choppy (problems with connection, hardware, digital applications).
Lack of information
Finally, the Teleworking Observatory survey pointed out that employees are too rarely consulted during workspace reorganizations accompanying the implementation of teleworking (transition to “open space” or “flex office”).
This lack of information is also observed at the level of work organization. Only a third of employees consider that the implementation of teleworking was decided in consultation with the team. Women seem even further removed from these decision-making: they declare more frequently than men that they do not know how remote teamwork has been organized (28% compared to 21% of men), nor if a remote monitoring system of their work exists (47% versus 39%).
Women are therefore both more constrained by teleworking and less informed regarding its implementation, which demonstrates the place they occupy in the teleworking policies of organizations.
Teleworking is often “bad”
Women’s access to teleworking remains relatively recent. If they telework today at the same level as men and even a little morefor a long time the typical teleworker was a man, executivewho worked remotely on an occasional and mostly informal basis, in case-by-case interpersonal arrangements.
Even before the pandemic, the occasional teleworking predominates on regular teleworking: it remains the prerogative of executives and remains more masculine. It took the health crisis and the proliferation of teleworking agreements for women to have greater access to teleworking, in particular non-executive women, who occupy positions in intermediate professions or employees in office professions.
This strong feminization and this relative democratization of teleworking do not happen without problems. THE ethnographic surveys long-term studies carried out by one of us show that teleworking policies implemented by organizations are not neutral from a gender point of view. While teleworking is in theory intended for everyone, they depict more or less desirable and legitimate figures, marked by stereotypes.
In a certain number of organizations, teleworking is implemented reluctantly, due to regulatory obligations or the health crisis. It is designed as a social policy very (too) favorable to employees which risks weighing on productivity. On closer inspection, the suspicion initially falls on women and mothers, suspected of being poorly committed and of wanting to telework on Wednesdays to look following their children, especially when they occupy positions with little salary. responsibilities.
In these organizations, men are more hesitant to use a “bad gender” system, while women who do so are stigmatized and remain highly controlled, their remote work being carefully scrutinized.
In other organizations, a more organizational orientation is given to teleworking, approached on the contrary as a signal of modernity and an opportunity to implement “new ways of working”. The implicit figure of the teleworker is rather that of the “good manager”, who trusts his teams and gives them autonomy.
However, this figure, constructed in the “neutral masculine”, struggles to extend to lower hierarchical levels, which are structurally more feminized. Access to teleworking often remains more complicated – for example, we are reluctant to grant teleworking to assistants, who we like to keep on hand – and its practice can also be more restricted in terms of number of days granted or possibilities to adapt your schedules.
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