Hybridization and hyperconnectivity: an avoidance strategy to escape domestic chores? Unplug and come back to us! A study carried out in 2022 concludes that men are more involved in domestic and family tasks when telecommuting from home. Telecommuting, the jackpot of work-life balance?

Five years after the Covid-19 pandemic and massive telecommuting, organizational scientists have highlighted the side effects of hybrid working: organizational layout, blurring of work/life boundaries and work overload. Telecommuting now affects a quarter of employees in France, and two-thirds of managers. It is particularly widespread among those with permanent contracts, the most highly educated, the youngest and in the private sector.

This Copernican revolution in the workplace is having an impact on the intimate sphere of the couple. The Haut Conseil à l “égalité entre les femmes et les hommes report, ‘Pour une mise en œuvre du télétravail soucieuse de l’ égalité entre les femmes et les hommes”, mentions numerous inequalities suffered by women, particularly in terms of the distribution of domestic tasks and mental workload. The imbalance between men and women is said to be amplified by telecommuting. Childcare difficulties and unsuitable workspaces are to blame.

A new fact: this hybrid way of working allows you to escape from certain domestic tasks. To this end, we conducted a quantitative study between February 3 and March 3, 2022 among 211 home-based teleworkers, the day after the obligation to telework was lifted. It concluded that, among our sample, men are more involved in domestic and family tasks when teleworking from home. A better reconciliation of life times and less involvement in domestic chores could therefore be to women’s advantage.

So can home-based teleworking reduce gender inequalities in the workplace by rebalancing tasks in favour of women?

Unequal gender division of domestic labor

For sociologist Marianne Le Gagneur, teleworking does not redistribute the unequal sexual division of domestic labor. Female teleworkers rely on this day to wash their clothes or dishes, for example, and no longer have any real breaks. TheUGIC-CGT’s 2023 survey also suggests that telecommuting results in more intense days for women. This context of technical difficulties makes their activity less fluid and more choppy than that of men – problems of connection, equipment, digital applications.

Our results partly contradict these studies and surveys. They enrich those of Safi, who concludes that there is a more equitable distribution of domestic tasks when telecommuting. To the question “When you work from home, do you take the opportunity to look after your children?”, 16% of men answered “often or very often”, compared with 8% of women.

When asked “When you work from home, do you take advantage of the opportunity to take care of household chores?” 29% of men are concerned, compared with 28% of women.

Men take part in domestic and family tasks. These ambivalent and surprising results point to telecommuting as an issue at the heart of the rebalancing of time and a different distribution of domestic constraints between men and women.

Increased working hours

For 82% of respondents to the UGIC-CGT survey, telecommuting is the preferred way to guarantee a better work/life balance. This promise of a better articulation of life times is accompanied by an increase in working hours – 35.9% of respondents – and difficulties in disconnecting. Only 36% of respondents benefit from a right to disconnect, even though this right is enshrined in the French Labor Code. This suggests that telecommuting, whether exclusive or alternating, is associated with lower levels of pro/perso balance tensions than exclusively face-to-face work.

 

This hybridization of living spaces, where work and domestic or family activities intermingle, certainly brings flexibility. For example, you can take your children to the crèche before going to work. But it can also be a source of stress. It generates a feeling of inability to manage everything at once, leading to role conflicts, where professional demands encroach on personal life and vice versa.