The study found that couples who work from home do not have the same experience.
The Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business conducted a study. According to the study, research shows that husbands and wives complete more family-related tasks when they work from home.
Wives completed fewer tasks when they worked from home than when they worked in the office. But when husbands worked from home, they did less in the office.
Wives felt increased guilt about failing to do household chores and spending time with their families while doing too much office work.
There are still some gender differences in how to manage work and family responsibilities. Jasmine, lead author of the study and an executive professor at Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business, said the study shows that men and women don’t have the same experience working from home.
Researchers conducted two studies during the Covid pandemic. One study involved 172 married earning couples. In mainland China, couples have only one child. That study was done in April and May 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic.
The second study was done in South Korea, where the epidemic occurred from June to August 2021. There were 60 earning couples, some with children and some without children. In both surveys, all participants completed two surveys each day for 14 consecutive working days.
Each husband reported the extent to which his wife worked from home and the amount of work and family tasks they completed. They completed a variety of measures including work-family conflict and family-work conflict, how much guilt they felt toward their families and their work, and psychological withdrawal from work and family.
Findings show that when husbands have shorter work schedules, wives complete more work tasks when they work from home than in the office.
When wives had more work, husbands completed significantly more family tasks while working from home. Findings showed that when employees (both husband and wife) worked from home, they completed more work around their home and family, but it increased their feelings of interpersonal conflict, psychological disengagement from work, and feelings of work-related guilt.
“Managers should create realistic expectations about how much work their remote workers can effectively handle and show greater understanding of the work-at-home situations of earning couples,” Hu said. Also, companies and managers should give their male employees as much flexibility as possible.