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According to researchers, women are more overworked in telework than in the office. They would do a lot more housework.
Is telework the key to fulfillment? Not really, according to two new studies of Chinese and Korean couples. When women telecommute, their spouses do less housework.
Domestic tasks: women working from home are at a disadvantage
While researchers found that couples overall did more housework when working from home than in the office, working from home would still be a better deal for men than for women.
Indeed, according to the results of these studies conducted respectively on 172 married couples (residing in China) and 60 couples (residing in South Korea), when women work at home, husbands perform fewer household tasks than when they are in the office.
On the other hand, the reverse is not true: women working outside the home do not see their domestic expenses decrease if their husbands telecommute.
The mental load unequally distributed within the couple
In addition, in both studies, women working in companies felt more guilty about not doing household chores and/or spending time with their family. In men, this result could only be demonstrated in one study.
For the researchers, these differences in behavior can be explained by the mental load, which women still experience in the majority.
“There are still gender differences in how they handle their work and family responsibilities”concludes Jasmine Hu, lead author of the study and professor of management at Fisher College of Business at Ohio State University.
Slide: Illustrated Mental Workload