Gendered Effects of a Crisis-induced Work-from-Home Shock: A Time-Motion Study Using Digital Footprints

Problem definition: While organizations are adopting hybrid and even remote-first work schedules, the potentially gendered impact of work-from-home (WFH) on operational outcomes remains poorly understood. Methodology/results: To examine this question, we combine a crisis-induced shock (i.e., the Covid-19 lockdown) that forced a shift to WFH due to stay-at-home orders, with a novel methodology to gather contextualized digital trace data. We examine the online time allocation — akin to a time-motion study for white collars — of 1,094 individuals across various activities and industries, when in-person work related and leisure activities were abruptly curtailed by the pandemic, inducing a shift to home-based work and online activities. Analysis of over 30 million website visits reveals that overall, this crisis-induced WFH increased the time devoted to both work-related and leisure pursuits online. However, these gains are significantly larger for men, giving rise to new gender gaps. We observe notable disparities in online work and leisure activities, including on smartphones, suggesting that crisis-induced WFH reshapes workers’ daily activities differently across genders. These gender differences are amplified among parents — a pattern consistent with increased household obligations placing greater constraints on women’s ability to fully benefit from the flexibility offered by WFH. Furthermore, we observe a substantial relative decline in women’s job search activities after the WFH shock, also corroborated using a large, external dataset from a major online recruitment platform. Managerial implications: These results underscore how sudden WFH mandates as response to a major crisis can differentially affect women’s work, employment prospects and long-term career trajectories. Our findings call attention to the importance of factors outside of the office in determining the success of WFH arrangements. Even though WFH could lower facilities cost and carbon footprint and increase workers’ flexibility, gender-specific constraints — especially those related to household responsibilities — can produce uneven outcomes. These results highlight the need for organizations and policymakers to design WFH policies that effectively address gender disparities, particularly in environments where childcare and other domestic duties fall disproportionately on women.