Making flexible working work for women
Calligo Scholar Lily Rodel is taking a deep dive into the tech industry to find out what impact flexible and remote working is having on gender inequality.
Working women have long been on an unequal footing with their male colleagues: earning less, saving less and spending more hours on unpaid care and domestic work. The introduction of remote and more flexible working arrangements during the pandemic held great promise for shifting this landscape, but several years on, questions remain as to its true impact.
‘Over the pandemic there was a lot of reporting about the “she-cession”, which is the idea that COVID-19 had disproportionately affected women and, specifically, women’s labour market outcomes,’ explains DPhil researcher and Calligo Scholarship holder Lily Rodel. ‘There was a feeling that more women than men were giving up their jobs to care for children. But when I started to do more research, I found that the opposite had happened in the UK: more women – and specifically mothers of young children – had joined the labour market full time than before the pandemic. I really wanted to understand why this was.’
This question was a compelling jumping off point for Lily, who is now in the second year of a three-year DPhil programme exploring gender inequality and remote work. Having used her first three terms at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) to hone her research proposal, she’s now turning to mothers directly to understand their experience of work, as well as to their co-workers and bosses for broader perceptions of mothers in the workplace.
‘I want to work in a collaborative way with people to develop answers. I want to involve women with my research so that they feel like they’re playing an active role, rather than just being observed’
‘Although a lot of people say that encouraging women into the labour market by offering remote and flexible working arrangements is a good thing and a step in the right direction for gender equality, there are others who say that just offering flexible work alone is not going to change gender norms,’ explains Lily. ‘And in fact there’s a risk of creating a two-tiered workforce with women working from home, mothers working from home, everyone else in the office, and barriers to inclusion and progression for those who do choose to work remotely.’
Through her research Lily hopes to find out if the increased prevalence of flexible and remote working since the pandemic has led to a shift in gender and workplace norms, and provide insights that can help to create more inclusive workplaces for everybody. She is conducting interviews, focus groups, workshops and other forms of ethnographic research with participants across the tech sector in an effort to uncover the most pertinent issues. ‘I want to be led from the ground up and learn from the experts, which is them,’ she says.
Lily’s curiosity about modern society and what it means to be human in the digital age took off while studying for her undergraduate degree in social anthropology. ‘I was really interested in questions around what makes us human: why do we act in the ways that we do? Why do we rationalise certain actions and reject others?’ she explains. ‘I think people often have an impression of anthropology as studying small-scale societies that are far away, but I was always more interested in trying to understand and unpack our own society, and how it shapes us as individuals.’
Lily working in an Oxford café. Photo by John Cairns
After moving on to a master’s degree in digital anthropology and, later, into a job at a public sector consultancy, Lily found her interest in technology and work-life balance growing. ‘I knew I wanted to do a PhD in this subject but didn’t think it would be possible. I didn’t know how the funding would work and so it just seemed like a far-off dream.’ It was thanks to a scholarship supported by data services company Calligo that Lily was finally able to achieve her ambition. ‘I would not be here without that funding,’ she says, matter-of-factly.
Lily has found the OII to be the perfect home for her work. ‘It’s a really exciting place to be,’ she says, describing it as a tight-knit community with a socially motivated focus, where research is being developed for the benefit of society. She has also found happiness in her connection with Balliol College. ‘It’s been great. There’s an active middle common room and I’ve been teaching yoga there every week. It’s been a really nice change from my previous experience of living in London.’
For Lily, now is the ideal time to be studying this particular topic and potentially help to bring some clarity to the debate. ‘In terms of public opinion it seems to be so split,’ she says. ‘One day everyone’s talking about the virtues of working from home and the next day there are bosses calling people back to the office. But if you look at surveys of what workers want, women are much more likely to want flexibility. I think that’s not only because it allows them to manage their schedules and be more autonomous, but it’s also because a lot of workplaces are built around a masculine culture, and that is exclusive to them.’
‘The tech sector has seen massive growth in recent years. It has the highest level of remote work and, proportionately, has the most women joining’
Although still in the early stages of gathering data, Lily is very clear about what she hopes to achieve through her work at the OII. As well as contributing to the sociological knowledge base, she hopes that her research will travel into everyday lives and plans to present her findings back to the organisations she has been working with at the end of her degree. ‘I hope to show how the work-life balance of employees is actually a positive thing for bosses, and suggest ways that they can ensure people who work flexibly have a fair chance in the workplace.’
To help her achieve this outcome, Lily says that she will be guided by her two passions: understanding people and providing a benefit to society. ‘The good thing about this subject is that women, parents, do want change, and to feel like someone is listening to them and could create something that could contribute to a change. That is what I have in my mind as the ultimate goal.’
Support graduate students at Oxford