So welcome everybody, welcome to this
week's Birkbeck connections video. As you
know, Birkbeck connections in
organizational psychology is a
network where we're aiming to bring our
professional community
together. We want to bring them together
to share knowledge, to glean
knowledge, and to think about
the latest trends in practice and
academia to learn from each other. It's
open to everybody, everybody with an
interest in psychology and behavior
at work should join our community. When
possible Birkbeck connections is going to be a quarterly face-to-face networking
series, more like a  conferencing series. But at the moment needs must and what we're
doing is producing a variety of videos.
And what we're doing in those videos is
sharing evidence and research from
academics within Birkbeck who really
have something important to say around
around the Covid pandemic.
Today I'm really thrilled to say that we're
welcoming, I'm going to say professor
Alexander Beauregard, I'm not allowed to
say that yet, but I'm going to
say it. Alex is an academic
here at the Department of organizational
psychology. She's also an editor of the
journal Work Employment and Society
Alex's work is centered on on this
work-life interface, so and flexible
working arrangements and diversity
management and in particularly looking
at gender identity and gender equality
and it's towards this that we're going
to turn our attention today. So I'm going
to be talking to Alex about how
these lockdown measures have transformed
the nexus of working care. Obviously with
the onset of of Covid19 we've had
swift and rapid change in the landscape
of demands and resources for working
care. the experience of
this from a gender perspective is one
that's come starkly into focus for many
of us while working at home during this
time. Alex, how have gendered work
and care roles changed or caused problems
for women during the pandemic? Well a lot
of different things have been happening,
so you know from a purely kind of
economic perspective usually when there
is any kind of an economic downturn you
usually find the kind of recession that
men's employment tends to be affected
more severely than women's employment.
But in this particular, you know during
the lockdown, most of the businesses and
the sectors that were affected most
strongly by having to observe social
distancing or to shut down, these tended
to be sectors in which women were
employed more so than men and so in this
particular, I don't want to call it a
recession, but you know in this
particular lock down we did find that
there were more women than men being
furloughed, there were more women than
men losing work or being unable to work
because their businesses, not all
of which enabled them to to make use of
government funding, you know had been
shut down for the duration of the
lockdown, so right away we were seeing
kind of that effect.
If we turn our attention then to women
who were able to keep working, perhaps
whose jobs enabled them to work from
home, you know, as you sort of alluded to
in your introduction, you know we're all
we're all living the research right now
aren't we?
All the research that I've done on on
work-life balance and working from home
and flexible working I'm like oh god
it's like some hideous case study that
we're all having to live through now and
so what we find from a gender
perspective is and we look at people
working from home, especially in dual
earner or dual career households now
that both men and women have been
required to work from home, what tends to
happen is that and this is obviously not
you know in every single case but,
generally, what research has told us
happens in the past when men or women
are working from home, men tend to work
in a room with a door, right the door's
closed. I have an important work call I
have a report that do I need to do this
okay
and other members of the household tend
to protect that work time and I'm not
saying that children protect that work
time but I'm saying that these you know
female partners of men working from home
tend to protect that work time. They will
arrange household activities and kind of
make sure that people, the not, these men
are not not interrupted in their work
but we don't see that same kind of
reciprocity happening necessarily when
women work from home. So this is what the
research tells us from before the
lockdown prior to Covid19 and there has
been research emerging kind of, you know
since the lockdown, people are collecting
all sorts of interesting data and it's
not like we're seeing some kind of huge
change in that, right. We're finding that
women and men are working from home but the
women are the ones who are still
responsible for the increased child care
responsibilities that have come with, you
know schools and nurseries being closed.
Research coming up now is showing
us that women working from home during
the lockdown we're performing about two
and a half hours of home schooling daily
on top of the work hours, you know, for
their children this is stuff that their
their husbands or their male partners
are not not involved with to as great an
extent. They're doing more regular
childcare that does not involve home
schooling. They are doing increased
households domestic work, you know the
increased cooking and the cleaning and
everything else that comes along when
you have people inhabiting the house 24
hours a day for months at a time. So we
see all these extra kind of unpaid work
activities piling on top of the paid
work and that women are taking these on
to a greater extent than men during this
pandemic. Research from this period is
also telling us that women in the UK are
reducing their working time when
possible, they are less likely to be
taking on new tasks and new work
responsibilities during this time, which
you know makes a lot of sense, we can see
why that's happening. But this is also
a time when there are
opportunities to show new skill sets,
right, this is this is for some people
this is their time to shine and we are
finding that that women are not taking
that because they don't have the
capacity right now with all the extra
unpaid domestic work going on.
So in addition to losing more jobs than
men do, we are finding that when they
continue to work and are working from
home women are experiencing more
disadvantage than men are. Wow I
couldn't nod more strongly as most of
that, this idea of being hit from all
sides. I read reports that from the
Institute of Fiscal Studies that said
this difference about the potential of
losing your job I was expecting it to be
small but it's 47 women are 47 percent
more likely to lose their jobs at the
moment during the Covid crisis. It's
huge isn't it? It's massive. Crazy and
also that's bad argument that it's
about obviously doing more childcare but
also that argument in the
gender research that well, often the
disparity is because women men do these
dangerous jobs and then on the flip side
we see during the pandemic but in the healthcare seventy
nine percent of the workforce are female
and and what could be more dangerous
than that at the moment. Yeah. Is there any difference? So does
intersectionality come into this? Are
there any females that are having more
of it more of a hard time than others?
Can we see any differences by things
like ethnicity or socioeconomic status?
Well, yeah as always black and minority
ethnic women are getting the short end
of the stick, you know. So when we talk
about female versus male disadvantage
this has never ever broken down but once
once if you can break it down usually
any kind of equality measure if you can
break it down by ethnicity you usually
find that, you know, white women are
disadvantaged but in relative terms
they're not as disadvantaged as black
and minority ethnic women. And what
you're saying about women working in
health care is is really really
pertinent here because we do see that
in the NHS a lot of these jobs are
held by black and ethnic minority
workers and you know most of these do
tend to be women. So right away, right
away that's putting people into physical
danger right now, right. These aren't jobs
going down the mines, but suddenly they
are jobs we were exposed to to a much
higher viral load than your average individual sheltering
at home, right? And you know, so these are
key workers, they're having to leave the
house, they're having to go into, not just
work, you know in in environments where
there are other people but work in
environments where there are other, in
many cases, very sick people. Individuals
who are working jobs that are not
particularly highly paid or who do not
have you know a family or a personal car
they are taking public transport expose
themselves to more risk. Those who have
children are, you know those children are
in school we still don't know very much
about to what extent children are you
know viral transmitters but there's much
more you know, their lives have not
changed in the extent to which they are
moving around traveling, people are in
different different locations. But
obviously all of that carries much more
risk now than they used to. And we also
know that in some, for some individuals
from ethnic minorities it is much more
common to live in multi-generational
households, or to live with more than one
family group in one household and that
also, you know, as we know now, if you have
adults coming in and out of the house
because they are, you know, they're doing
key worker jobs and they are being
exposed to the virus to a greater extent.
Then obviously that is that is putting a
lot of, you know, it's putting other
people in the household at risk and that
puts individuals you know under
considerable strain as well. So it's not
just the strain of doing your job and
trying to provide for your family and
trying not to get sick but then you're
worried about everyone else in your
household, you're worried about your job,
you're worried about caring for others.
It's yeah, it's just that that extra
burden you know. Yeah, absolutely and so
much of this we're gonna
learn over the coming years up aren't we, when
we see more and more data published? Yeah
I mean research-wise it's a, you know a
fascinating fertile ground, but the human
cost is horrible. Yeah, yeah.Talking of
research, obviously you're you're an
expert in flexible working and 
home working - how does how does the best
practice and the best evidence on home
working apply to to like life working
from home during the pandemic? Well
that's so funny right, because it's so
different so you know prior to to the
pandemic
lockdown oh you know working from home I
would hate to work from home I have to
work from the office I don't have the
discipline to work from home blah blah
blah you know okay well you know here's
what the research says but about working
from home. The research talks about
something called the home working
paradox, right, this idea that working from
home sounds like it's gonna be great, it
sounds like, you know you don't have to
deal with the commute,  you don't have to
deal with co-workers interrupting you
all the time, you just have all this
uninterrupted time to kind of like sit
and think and you know generate these
fabulous ideas and do all this great
work. But what what the research tells us
is that actually although home working
is very good in terms of giving workers
more and more freedom and control over,
you know the work that they're doing and
how when they choose to schedule that
work and how they choose to do that work.
Also what we find is that people who
work from home on a frequent basis they
they exhibit less of an ability to
disengage from work, so the thing is that
when you were at home and your work is
also at home and you know you're living
and you're working is all taking place
in the same physical space that starts
to affect the mental space. So we talk
about this idea of blurred boundaries,
right. Sort of this this line between
okay and now I'm at work I'm thinking
about work I'm doing work
okay now I'm leaving my office, I'm
getting on the tube I'm going home. Now
I'm thinking about, you know family stuff
or things to do with my friends or
things to do with whatever .We don't have
those kind of boundaries those
separators, so we can refer back to
boundary theory and it talks about the
extent to which people prefer to just to
compartmentalize, no to segment like this
is my work and this is my home life and
this is my social life or my hobbies
whatever and I keep these things very
separate. So some people prefer that kind
of segmentation, other people prefer a
style that is more about integration,
right. This idea, like I'll go to work and
I'll have a meeting and I'll go back to
my office and I do a little bit of
online shopping because you know we need some groceries for tomorrow and I'll take
a personal phone call and then I'm gonna
do some more work things and then when I
go home in the evening I'm gonna check
my work email and I'm gonna answer a
colleague. And you know, the activities
kind of, the mental the mental load and
the the physical task that you're doing
might kind of switch back and forth
throughout the day. So some people prefer
that style of working. But working from
home we tend to find that people just
start to integrate more but the work
part spills over more into the home
part. So the big concern that a lot of
employers prior to the lockdown seem to
have about working from home is that
okay if I have if I have workers who are
at home and doing their jobs they're
going to be distracted, all right, they're
gonna be sitting around watching TV
their kids are gonna come in and talk to
them they're going to be I don't know I
don't know what what bosses think their
employees are doing at home I don't know
how exciting they think our homes are.
But what the research consistently finds
is that it's the opposite, people who
work from home tend to work longer hours
than they do when they're in the office,
you know, we get excited we're like oh I
don't have a commute, guess what we're
not spending that same time doing
anything fun, it turns out that we just
end up working longer hours. You might
get some work, some some personal
tasks done during our lunch break or
throw a load of laundry, but we tend to
just work longer hours. When all of your
work equipment is there in your home, you
know, especially if you don't have a home
big enough that you can have a separate
home office and you can close the door
and not see anything. If you can see your
computer, if you can see your phone, if
you can see that notifications have come
up it is really really hard to just be
like. Well you know it's Tuesday evening
at 8 o'clock I'm not gonna look at it. It
takes a lot of self-discipline not to do
that and especially during a time like
now, and I think a lot of people are more
worried about losing their jobs and they
have been before perhaps, nobody wants to
skip those emails or those phone calls
you want to make sure that you're on top
of things. So this this is the home
working paradox - you work from home, you
have more autonomy, you have more control
of your work, more freedom, but you are it
is harder to kind of psychologically
disengage from work and so there's this
potential for the boundaries be blurred
and it's like am I at home? am I at work?
I don't know, you know what is this
time I'm not really sure I should be
doing I saw this fabulous tweet a week
or so ago something to the effect of
we should stop calling it working from
home and started calling it living at
work and I was like ha ha ha God that's
so depressing but it's kind of does it feel
that way sometimes right like it just
it's always there it's just. I miss the
literature, is the literature to date is
it taking into account gender do you
think? do you think it's going to be
suddenly we're gonna look at home
working gender or is it always been
there? It hasn't been there too much. We
do find that I mean men and women seem
equally likely to want to take up
working from home. What researchers found
is that women are more likely to cite
family related reasons for wanting to
work from home whereas men are more
likely to, you know, at least tell their
bosses that the reason they want to do
it is to have more time and space to
concentrate. Of course a lot of this is
all self presentation so you know we
don't know for sure. Yeah I kind of
wonder how that is going to be going
forward. You kind of hope that now that
men and women have all been working from
home for quite some time, you would hope
that more organizations would realize
that this is a viable way for people to
work, you know given the schools and
nurseries can remain open and so that
you're not trying to do two jobs at the
same time, um but there's also kind of
that hope that maybe there's not going
to be that, what they call they call a
flexibility stigma, you know this idea
that if you want to use flexible working
practices that that can that can,
depending on the kind of organizational
culture where you are, that can signal to
to your colleagues or to your
supervisors that maybe, you know, maybe
you're not as committed to work as you
could or should be and there is research
suggesting that men are more subject to
flexibility stigma than women are
because there's a kind of assumption
that okay women will want to work from
home because they need to pick up their
kids from school but if a man has to
work from home that's like don't you
have a wife who can do that? like what
kind of man are you that you're worried
about your family and you want to kind
of you know. And it sounds like a
ridiculously old-fashioned attitude but
you know research from within the past
few years is still showing some evidence
of this because you know these gender
roles and these gender expectations are
really deep seated in a lot of cases so
there is that hope that after you know
the last few months of many many more
men working from home and kind of seeing
what it's like to have your kids at home all day and having to deal with them that maybe things will change a bit
going forward and I mean I guess worst
case scenario that maybe all parents
will be discriminated against - it'll be
like no, don't work from home I know
what's gonna happen now but
you know maybe maybe they'll equalize
things a bit who knows. Talking about,
talking about the future looking forward
what do you think there will be
implications of the pandemic on gender
equality going forward?
I'm nervous about speculating and I'm
nervous about looking for too far into
the future because I think a lot of
things that I assumed would have
happened by now just haven't happened, I think
I just expect change will always be a
lot faster than it is. I guess that's why
this has been so interesting because you
know a flexible working and working from
home it's been around for a long time
and it seemed to be increasing in
popularity and then kind of in the last
five to ten years there was this weird
backlash against it by some of the major,
you know, mostly American firms but you
know remember Yahoo and Best Buy and all
those companies like five ten years ago
but no it's too important to have
synergy, we need people bumping into each
other and the corridors you know know
we're working from home there's like oh
my gosh like we're regressing things are
going backwards so you know I think this
has hopefully moved that whole flexible
working debate forward I'm hoping that
you know organizations and I realize and
you don't need to force people to come
into the same office space every single
day, so that you can see them while
they're doing their work. But what I'm
also hoping is that this is going to
kind of bring to the forefront of
people's minds the fact that you do need
certain conditions to work from home
effectively and not to just become this
kind of constantly working a tom a tom,
automaton.
I I've been in lockdown too long I can
no longer speak English.
Cuz yeah what all the research did tell
us before that lockdown is that to be a
really effective home worker who was
still able to psychologically detach
from work and and have, you know a
balanced lifestyle is that you needed a
separate physical space in which to do
your work, preferably with a door. You
know the ideal the ideal home office
would be like a shed if you had a back
garden and then you could like leave
your house go there shut the door yes so
this is like the kind of you know best
practice you know and to have these, to
kind of Institute these boundaries have
physical space where you can leave your
work equipment in a room and close the
door and not look at it, sort of these
temporal boundaries like time-based
boundaries, you know do you have a set
finishing time at every day? Don't let
yourself sit there like I'll just finish
this oh I'm on a roll like, you know
people and the research that I've done
that talked about people who work from
home but all the time look they were
100% home workers that at their local
offices that closed they said they had
appointments to
walk the dogs with friends or neighbors
you know at 5:30 or at 6 o'clock or
whatever every single day and so even if
they weren't finished at work
they were accountable to somebody, they
had to leave, they had to stop you know
they had to kind of set that boundary.
Other people had family members who set
boundaries for them you know it's
lunchtime you need to stop working, you
need to come eat, you know. No it's Friday
night, put down the phone you're not
checking you're not checking emails and
and so without having those boundaries
it's it's really difficult to work
effectively. So I'm kind of hoping in
future that you know workers and
employers are paying more attention to
that so that home working can be healthy
for people and not just a way to squeeze
more work hours out of them. Really
really useful suggestion thank you. About
that about boundary management and also
this idea just hopefully that
organizations will start to recognize
that that flexible working is going to
be an organizational need going forward
and not to perk and offered offered to
the few. I think fascinating insights
about this that putting that the gender
lens on that today as well. Thank you so
much, I could talk all afternoon but um
next week we're going to be is going to
be the last series in our in our
interview series. We're going to be
talking to Dr. Rebecca Whiting next week
about digi housekeeping um again again
fascinating subjects exploring the
invisible load of remote and flexible
working and I know probably both of
us have got a lot of nodding to do on
that one as well. Well it's funny isn't
it how it's invisible and then once
Rebecca starts talking about it you're
like you can't unsee it then every time
you do it you're like oh it's happening
again I'm doing this. So watch next
week everybody and thank you so much
Alex it's been a real pleasure.
