Equity In The Virtual Workplace

Will we repair the broken rung or build a gendered firewall?

It’s no secret that the advancement and adoption of technology have changed the business world. It’s shifted the status quo and forced us to reconfigure and reconsider the nature of labor. Thanks to technological advances, we have increased our productivity, expanded into global markets, and deepened human interconnectivity. Simply put, technology has been a liberating force for better businesses, global economies and society. 
 

When we consider the impact of technology on the advancement of workplace gender equality, however, we must ask ourselves, “How much positive change have we really created?” If we take an honest look at the current nature of our workplace, the answer becomes glaringly apparent: Not much. 

Take the introduction of the computer. While it undoubtedly revolutionized many aspects of business, our adoption of this technology had dramatically gendered implications. Whereas men were able to leverage its advent and implementation to secure advancement to leadership positions and other lucrative career fields, such as engineering and computer science, women’s use of this new technology was restricted to data-entry and clerical activities.¹ This gendered impact solidified women’s underrepresentation in leadership positions and STEM fields—disparities that are still highly present today. It may have revolutionized many aspects of business, but in the context of workplace gender equality, the computer—like many other technologies and digital advancements—did nothing more than adapt to and uphold pre-existing gender hierarchies in the workplace.² 

While we have historically failed to leverage technology’s liberating potential to advance gender equality in the workplace, the COVID-19 pandemic is giving us a chance to finally get it right. Social distancing measures have catalyzed digital transformation for many businesses, and it is unlikely the genie will be put back in the bottle when it comes to working from home. 

With the transition to a virtual workplace, we have witnessed a largescale implementation of new telecommuting and virtual workplace technologies—all of which are changing the nature of work as we know it. Workers are managing projects, conducting meetings, monitoring productivity and evaluating the performance of their teams from their kitchen tables. In 2018, the OECD reported that digital transformation had the opportunity to advance the economic empowerment of women, but observed that biases and the cultural norms still prevented women from gaining access to the education and technology that digital transformation offered³.

This current state of flux has presented us with a new opportunity to recognize the power of these technologies to advance gender equality. But recognizing this potential is not enough—we must make an intentional effort to strategically promote gender equity in a digital workplace, if we want to shatter the glass ceiling, instead of building a gendered firewall.

While our transition to virtual at-home working environments has great potential to advance gender equality, it does not come without some complex challenges. It’s important to recognize and address the ways in which workplace gender equality is challenged by our recent transition to virtual work. 

Women have historically struggled to balance the domestic expectations that society has of their gender with the demands of their careers. Virtual workplaces will likely make this task even more difficult. 

While initial proponents of telecommuting argued that it would act as an equalizing force, promoting a more equal distribution of domestic responsibilities among men and women, a 2018 study revealed otherwise.⁴ Even though male telecommuters did take on more responsibilities at home, women experience disproportionately more work-life conflict. This disparity is explained not only by the removal of physical boundaries between work and home in a virtual workplace, making it more difficult for women to separate already intersecting aspects of life, but also by the gendered perceptions regarding telecommuting, itself. Men tend to view telecommuting as a means to increase their work productivity and performance, while women view it as a means of better balancing their work and home responsibilities⁵, meaning tension between work and family life disproportionately affects women. 

Therefore, despite initial hopes that telecommuting would advance gender equality, it becomes clear that virtual workplaces can hardly be viewed as an equalizing force in itself. Women working from home are still disadvantaged by socio-cultural gender norms.

Given that only 33% of managerial positions are held by women⁶, it is evident that we still have a long way to go when it comes to reaching gender equality in hiring, development, and promotion in organizations in general.

In our research on gender-bias in leadership development programs, Repairing the Broken Rung: Overcoming Bias in the Leadership Pipeline, we found women encountered more managerial bias that assumes they are not endowed with the aptitude for leadership positions as men are. In a virtual workforce and digitized workplace, women are likely to face even more bias and barriers preventing them from reaching leadership positions. On top of the disproportionately more work-life tension working women experience, women are also likely to encounter more limiting assumptions about their aptitude with STEM skills and ability to lead a digitized organization, holding them back from development opportunities and leadership roles even further.

While the issue of gender hierarchies in organizations is made more complex in online working environments, there are several actions we can take to strategically advance gender equality in virtual workplaces.

Since women are more likely to experience a heightened sense of work-life conflict in a virtual workplace, it is essential that organizations normalize the overlap of work and home. Organizations can do more than simply supplying access to virtual working arrangements, they must also build a supportive work-family culture to realize the engagement and performance gains that such arrangements offer. Whether this is done through communities of practice for teleworking, online newsletters focused on promoting work-life balance, or flexible meeting times that are adjusted to family schedules, organizations must do what they can to embrace and support the blurring of work and family boundaries inherent in a virtual workplace.

Perhaps the most important measure a company can take to ensure women’s visibility and equality in a virtual workplace is to implement objective measures of performance evaluation, especially when it comes to leadership development and succession planning. While most organizations currently use managerial rating and nominations to identify candidates for promotion, these evaluations are laden with biases and result in 2/3rd of companies in our survey showing evidence of gender discrimination. The use of objective performance evaluation software can help ensure that performance evaluations, leadership development, and promotions are equitable and unbiased, as organizations work to repair the broken rung and embrace a digital world.

Given this new era of virtual workplace capabilities, we find ourselves at a crossroads: we can continue to let gender inequality stagnate as we adopt new technologies, or we can decide to use the opportunity presented by COVID-19 and an accelerating digital transformation to strategically implement strategies that advance gender equality in a virtual workplace. 

The choice to repair the broken rung or build a gendered firewall is ours—and I think it’s time we chose to finally get it right.

Notes
¹Cockburn, Cynthia. Machinery of dominance: Women, men, and technical know-how. Northeastern Univ Pr, 1988. 
² Henwood, Flis. "Establishing gender perspectives on information technology: problems, issues and opportunities." Gendered by design (1993): 31-49.
³ OECD. Bridging the digital gender divide. 2018
⁴ Van der Lippe, Tanja, and Zoltán Lippényi. "Beyond formal access: Organizational context, working from home, and work-family conflict of men and women in European workplaces." Social Indicators Research (2018): 1-20.
⁵ Dangler, Jamie Faricellia. Hidden in the home: The role of waged homework in the modern world economy. SUNY Press, 1994.
⁶ McKinsey & Co. Women in the Workplace 2019. 2019

	Michelle Brown is the Chief Operating Officer at Pinsight and co-author of the research paper, Repairing the Broken Rung: Overcoming Bias in the Leadership Pipeline Connect Michelle Brown
	Lara Doyne is a Pinsight Research Analyst. She is currently studying Business Management and Leadership at the University of Denver.  Connect Lara Doyne
	Martin Lanik, CEO of Pinsight, is the lead author of the research paper, Repairing the Broken Rung: Overcoming Bias in the Leadership Pipeline.  He is also the author of the national bestseller, The Leader Habit. Connect Martin Lanik Visit www.pinsight.com  Follow @pinsightleader