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Remote workers’ free associations with working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic in Austria: The interaction between children and gender

Empirical evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic shows that women carried the major burden of additional housework in families. In a mixed-methods study, we investigate female and male remote workers’ experiences of working from home (WFH) during the pandemic. We used the free association technique to...

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Autores principales: Hartner-Tiefenthaler, Martina, Zedlacher, Eva, el Sehity, Tarek Josef
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9391219/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35996573
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.859020
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author Hartner-Tiefenthaler, Martina
Zedlacher, Eva
el Sehity, Tarek Josef
author_facet Hartner-Tiefenthaler, Martina
Zedlacher, Eva
el Sehity, Tarek Josef
author_sort Hartner-Tiefenthaler, Martina
collection PubMed
description Empirical evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic shows that women carried the major burden of additional housework in families. In a mixed-methods study, we investigate female and male remote workers’ experiences of working from home (WFH) during the pandemic. We used the free association technique to uncover remote workers’ representations about WFH (i.e., workers’ reflection of subjective experiences). Based on a sample of 283 Austrian remote workers cohabitating with their intimate partners our findings revealed that in line with traditional social roles, men and women in parent roles are likely to experience WFH differently: Mothers’ representations about WFH emphasize perceived incompatibility between the work and non-work sphere whereas fathers’ representations highlight work-family facilitation of WFH. However, gender differences were also prevalent for women and men without children: Women seem to particularly benefit from more concentration at home, whereas men consider WFH as more efficient, practical and leading to less work. Thus, our findings imply that gender affected perceptions of WFH during the pandemic independently from children, but children seemed to increase the existing burden, in particular for women. To conclude, WFH can generally be seen as an enabler to reduce work-life/family conflict for both women and men, but bears different challenges based on the contextual (family) situation.
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spelling pubmed-93912192022-08-21 Remote workers’ free associations with working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic in Austria: The interaction between children and gender Hartner-Tiefenthaler, Martina Zedlacher, Eva el Sehity, Tarek Josef Front Psychol Psychology Empirical evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic shows that women carried the major burden of additional housework in families. In a mixed-methods study, we investigate female and male remote workers’ experiences of working from home (WFH) during the pandemic. We used the free association technique to uncover remote workers’ representations about WFH (i.e., workers’ reflection of subjective experiences). Based on a sample of 283 Austrian remote workers cohabitating with their intimate partners our findings revealed that in line with traditional social roles, men and women in parent roles are likely to experience WFH differently: Mothers’ representations about WFH emphasize perceived incompatibility between the work and non-work sphere whereas fathers’ representations highlight work-family facilitation of WFH. However, gender differences were also prevalent for women and men without children: Women seem to particularly benefit from more concentration at home, whereas men consider WFH as more efficient, practical and leading to less work. Thus, our findings imply that gender affected perceptions of WFH during the pandemic independently from children, but children seemed to increase the existing burden, in particular for women. To conclude, WFH can generally be seen as an enabler to reduce work-life/family conflict for both women and men, but bears different challenges based on the contextual (family) situation. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-08-04 /pmc/articles/PMC9391219/ /pubmed/35996573 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.859020 Text en Copyright © 2022 Hartner-Tiefenthaler, Zedlacher and el Sehity. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Hartner-Tiefenthaler, Martina
Zedlacher, Eva
el Sehity, Tarek Josef
Remote workers’ free associations with working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic in Austria: The interaction between children and gender
title Remote workers’ free associations with working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic in Austria: The interaction between children and gender
title_full Remote workers’ free associations with working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic in Austria: The interaction between children and gender
title_fullStr Remote workers’ free associations with working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic in Austria: The interaction between children and gender
title_full_unstemmed Remote workers’ free associations with working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic in Austria: The interaction between children and gender
title_short Remote workers’ free associations with working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic in Austria: The interaction between children and gender
title_sort remote workers’ free associations with working from home during the covid-19 pandemic in austria: the interaction between children and gender
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9391219/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35996573
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.859020
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