Work-from-home during COVID-19: Accounting for the care economy to build back better

Abstract

In the COVID-19 pandemic, people’s dwellings suddenly became a predominant site of economic activity. We argue that, predictably, policy-makers and employers took the home for granted as a background support of economic life. Acting as if home is a cost-less resource that is free for appropriation in an emergency, ignoring how home functions as a site of gendered relations of care and labour, and assuming home is a largely harmonious site, all shaped the invisibility of the imposition. Taking employee flexibility for granted and presenting work-from-home as a privilege offered by generous employers assumed rapid adaptation. As Australia emerges from lockdown, ‘building back better’ to meet future shocks entails better supporting adaptive capabilities of workers in the care economy, and of homes that have likewise played an unacknowledged role as buffer and shelter for the economy. Investing in infrastructure capable of providing a more equitable basis for future resilience is urgent to reap the benefits that work-from-home offers. This article points to the need for rethinking public investment and infrastructure priorities for economic recovery and reconstruction in the light of a gender perspective on COVID-19 ‘lockdown’ experience. JEL Codes: E01, E22, J24

Home, sweet home? The impact of working from home on the division of unpaid work during the COVID-19 lockdown

“…Moreover, as unpaid work is invisible, it remains unrecognized in most policy decisions and is frequently neglected due to the belief that what happens in the household is a private matter. This became evident during the pandemic, as governments closed kindergartens and schools, while taking the provision of unpaid work in the home for granted [17].…”

The Impacts of Working at Home on the Productivity of Brazilian Women During the Covid-19 Pandemic

“…Before the COVID-19 pandemic, it was difficult for many people to imagine working in a home office, but due to the social distance from the COVID-19 pandemic, all workers (except who had "essential" jobs) homes become offices (Cho, 2020;Jenkins, Smith, 2021). Workers thought it would be a temporary home-based base: now many people started working in the home office format for the first time, due to the COVID-19 pandemic (Kramer & Kramer, 2020) and it is impossible not to have a prospect of expanding the remote model's deployment.…”

“…Home Office is also called "Work From Home" (WFH) and includes also working from other places, not necessarily home, but working at home was a mandatory condition of non-essential jobs (Kniffin et al, 2020). This model of remote workplace gained popularity among policy-makers due to the unreflective idea that the home is a cost-less resource without conflicts and disharmony (Jenkins & Smith, 2021). In 2018 Brazil beat the record of people working remotely -3,8mi (G1, 2019) and this achievement was overcome in 2020 during the pandemic: Research made by the consulting Betania Tanure Associados (BTA) with 359 Brazilian companies identified that 43% of them adopted the Working From Home (WFH) as a model during the social distancing (Época Negócios, 2020), accumulating a total of 7.3 million people in November 2020 (IBGE, 2020).…”

“…The stats in Brazil confirm this: According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística -IBGE, in Portuguese) the quantity of women WFH was 15% higher than men (IBGE, 2020). However, the inequality goes further than in the quantity: This model allowed the boundaries between work and personal life to decrease, and women were -not the only, but -the main ones impacted (Carli, 2020;Jenkins & Smith, 2021;Oakman, Kinsman, Stuckey, Graham & Weale, 2020). According to studies from International Labour Organization (ILO, 2020) suggests that COVID-19 outbreak is more likely to impact the women's employment than men's.…”

“…It means that the "return to work" announced by government officials around the world after a lockdown forgot about non-professional activities carried out mainly by women (Jenkins & Smith, 2021). This invisibility, according to Jenkins & Smith (2021), occurs because the ways of measuring productivity do not consider domestic productivity because it is unpaid work. The authors still point to care work as an example: out of home, paid, it's considered in productivity indexes, but in home is only a pressure.…”