Gender and the Impact of the Transition to Work from Home

Abstract

We examine the distinctiveness of female and male employees’ work-family conflict experiences as they transition to working from home (WFH) and how different experiences affect stress and job satisfaction divergently by surveying 264 employees who worked on-site before COVID-19 and were forced to transition to WFH due to the pandemic. Integrating boundary management theory, the COR theory and the job satisfaction literature, we tested gender differences in both WFC (work to family conflict) and FWC (family to work conflict) and the resulting effects on job satisfaction and stress after working from home. We find that both WFC and FWC decrease when employee worked from home, with WFC decreasing more. Besides, the surveyed employees report lower stress and higher job satisfaction when working from home. Female employees experience greater reduction in both WFC and FWC and more improvements in stress and job satisfaction than male employees. The changes in WFC and FWC after working from home have mediation effects on the relationship between gender and the changes in stress and job satisfaction. Our study provides a better understanding and prediction of the impact of working from home by focusing on exogenous transitions to WFH due to the pandemic, moving beyond self-selected samples in previous studies. Besides, our study contributes to the literatures on work-family interface and remote work by addressing the gender gap in the earlier research. Furthermore, our study has implications for organizational policies that alleviate the burden on employees, especially female employees.