Although working from home (WFH) is promoted as a policy supporting work-life balance, whether it benefits mental health remains unclear. Few studies have examined how these effects vary across social groups or addressed selection issues complicating causal inference. We use two-way fixed-effects models to analyze changes in mental health scores, measured with the 12-item General Health Questionnaire, among 39,863 participants in the UK Household Longitudinal Study (2009-2023). We reduce selection bias by using an occupation-level WFH measure derived from the UK Labour Force Survey. Before March 2020, increased WFH in men's occupations improved their mental health. For women, it benefited those in routine jobs but worsened outcomes for professionals. The pattern reversed from March 2020, with WFH positively impacting the mental health of professional women but not that of men or women in routine jobs. These findings highlight the importance of social positions and institutional contexts in shaping the mental health effects of WFH.

With growing workplace flexibility, an increasing number of studies highlight the pivotal role of work schedules and location in understanding the resources and constraints for working families. This paper uses Latent Class Analysis (LCA) on data from the 2019 Korean Time Use Survey (KTUS) to identify a typology among heterosexual dual-earner couples in South Korea, by investigating multidimensional aspects of working time, encompassing working hours (number of hours worked), schedules (daytime vs. evening/night) and location (on-site vs. working from home). We identified four working time patterns: (1) “dual-standard”, (2) “dual-ideal”, (3) “mismatch”, and (4) “neo-traditional”. Our results show that women’s work adaptations, through reduced hours, evening/night schedules, or working from home, largely drive the differences between couple types. The presence of preschool children significantly alters couple dynamics, often pushing mothers out of the ‘ideal worker’ market and encouraging strategic desynchronisation of schedules between partners to manage childcare. By moving beyond the traditional part-time/full-time dichotomy, this paper provides a new way of approaching couples’ working patterns, which can potentially improve our understanding of work and family well-being.

Despite the steep rise in working from home practices across the world, stigmatized views against remote workers still exist and are slowly coming back as evidenced by managers' requests for workers to return to the office. Drawing on a national sample of managers in Singapore, this study uses a factorial vignette experiment to examine how the framing of remote working may change managers' bias against remote workers and for whom such framing matters more. The results show that remote working is associated with significantly worse managerial perceptions in commitment, productivity, team spirit, and promotion opportunities for all gender-parenthood groups (i.e., mothers, fathers, and childless men and women). The scarring effects are more pronounced for fathers and childless workers compared to mothers because managers hold negative views against mothers regardless of their remote working status. When remote working is framed as a policy for all workers, the scarring effects are significantly mitigated for all groups. By contrast, in the context where remote working was framed as a policy only for mothers, or only for parents, the scarring effects remain significant for all groups and are even intensified for mothers. These findings highlight the importance of "de-coupling" remote working as specifically being for mothers or parents, to remove biases that may hinder good practices.

Research shows that the ideal worker norm-the masculine-gendered expectation of unlimited work devotion-perpetuates class and gender inequality, increases turnover rates, and negatively affects job satisfaction and work-life balance. Occupational research typically measures this norm through the share of employees working full-time or long hours. We advocate for a more comprehensive approach by (1) extracting employers' normative expectations from job adverts using machine learning, (2) separately quantifying the masculine-centric nature of this norm, and (3) tracing the norm's occupation-specific evolution. Further, we introduce the inclusive worker norm to juxtapose against the ideal worker norm. We demonstrate the inclusion of these diverse aspects at the occupational level, employing multi-level factor analyses to evaluate supply- and demand-side data for Switzerland, from 2001 to 2023. The validity of our indicators is supported by (1) factor analysis fit measures, (2) positive correlation with established indicators and part-time and gender pay gaps, and (3) negative associations with preferences for part-time work as estimated by multi-level models. By adopting this nuanced, occupation-specific, and historical lens, and leveraging job advert data, our research provides a novel approach to better analyze, understand, and address gender inequalities, and other work outcomes, perpetuated or mitigated by (shifts in) the ideal worker and inclusive worker norms.

Telecommuting is often portrayed as a work-life balance measure. Though, in theory, telecommuting can provide workers with more time for leisure and family, due to the boundary blurring between work and life spheres, it can exacerbate gender inequalities by pushing women to carry out more domestic work while increasing men's time in paid work. Empirically, the evidence is mixed. We extend the debate by exploring how individuals' gender role attitudes (GRA) moderate the relationship between telecommuting and the division of domestic work. We apply hybrid models to the German Family Panel data. The data covers the timespan from 2008 to 2021, which includes the unique COVID-19 pandemic. Results show that GRA matter. When getting access to telecommuting, egalitarian men increased their contribution to childcare, while traditional men did not. Similarly, telecommuting traditional women increased their childcare contribution. The pattern remained the same during the expansion of telecommuting due to the COVID-19 pandemic: only telecommuting traditional women and telecommuting egalitarian men increased their childcare contribution. The results of this study suggest that telecommuting has the potential to serve as a 'great equaliser'. However, achieving this requires actively promoting more egalitarian views on gender roles.

ABSTRACT This study examines how the pandemic changed the ethnicity gaps in working‐from‐home practices in the UK. We do this by examining seven waves of the UK Labour Force Survey from 2017 to 2023, divided into three time periods—pre‐pandemic, during‐lockdown and post‐lockdown. The results show that although the gap found between White and BME workers in the pre‐pandemic period disappears as we move into the post‐lockdown period, there are large differences between different ethnicities, especially when we intersect ethnicity with migration status, gender, and parental status. Even in the post‐lockdown period of 2022–2023, Black men, particularly Black fathers, stood out for their low levels of homeworking, alongside Chinese and ‘Other Asian’ workers ‐ both men and women. On closer inspection, we found that it was especially migrant workers from these ethnicities who were significantly worse off in terms of their access to homeworking. The paper shows that although we see a positive change in homeworking, which has increased for most ethnic groups over the course of the pandemic, certain groups are still left behind in this growth. The paper further highlights the need for an intersectional analysis when examining such labour market patterns.

Although flexible working has expanded rapidly, especially during the pandemic, biased views against flexible workers – namely, flexibility stigma - are still prevalent and returning. Flexibility stigma hinders worker’s take up of flexible working arrangements and can make flexible working arrangements result in negative outcomes for worker’s well-being and productivity. This study examines how national cultural and policy contexts shape flexibility stigma levels within a country. We use a multilevel approach using the Eurobarometer dataset of 2018, covering 28 European countries, matched with national level aggregate data on policy and culture. Results show that in countries with a more work-life balance work culture and egalitarian gender norms, we see less prevalence of flexibility stigma. Similarly, in countries with generous family-friendly policies, workers are less likely to have negative perception towards flexible working. Finally, stronger bargaining positions of workers, may it be through stronger union power or through better labour market conditions, helps remove stigmatised views around workers who use flexible working arrangements. This study evidences the importance of contexts that shape views around flexible working, to help us better understand policy changes needed to ensure better flexible working practices.

Objective: This paper explores how national family policies moderate the association between flexible working arrangements and work-to-family conflict across countries. Background: Although flexible working is provided to enhance work-family integration, studies show that it can in fact increase work-to-family conflict. However, certain policy contexts can help moderate this association by introducing contexts that enable workers to use of flexible working arrangements to better meet their family and other life demands. Method: The paper uses the European Working Conditions Survey of 2015 including data from workers with caring responsibilities from across 30 European countries. It uses a multilevel cross-level interaction model to examine how family policies, such as childcare and parental leave policies, can explain the cross- national variation in the association between flexible working arrangements, that is flexitime, working-time autonomy, and teleworking, and work-to-family conflict. Results: At the European average, flexible working was associated with higher levels of work-to-family conflict for workers, with working-time-autonomy being worse for men's, and teleworking being worse for women's conflict levels. In countries with generous childcare policies, flexitime was associated with lower levels of work-to-family conflict, especially for women. However, in countries with long mother's leave, working-time-autonomy was associated with even higher levels of work-to-family conflict for men. Conclusion: The results of this paper evidence how flexible working arrangements need to be introduced in a more holistic manner with possible reforms of wider range of family policies in order for flexible working to meet worker's work-family integration demands.

Homeworking is often portrayed as a work-life balance measure. Though in theory homeworking can provide workers with more time for leisure and family, due to the boundary blurring between work and life spheres, it can exacerbate gender inequalities by pushing women to carry out more domestic work while increasing men’s time in paid work. Empirically, the evidence is mixed. We extend the debate by exploring how individuals’ gender role attitudes moderate the relationship between homeworking and the division of domestic work. We apply hybrid models to the German Family Panel data (pairfam). The data covers the timespan from 2008 to 2021 which includes the unique COVID-19 pandemic. Results show that gender role attitudes matter. When gaining access to homeworking, egalitarian men increased their contribution to childcare, while traditional men did not. Similarly, homeworking traditional women increased their childcare contribution. During the expansion of homeworking due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there was some evidence for the equalization of roles, as men increased their childcare contribution regardless of their gender role attitudes. At the same time, similar to before the pandemic, homeworking traditional women increased their childcare contribution.