Pink Ladder, the career enhancement ecosystem for women professionals released the findings of “Remote working and its impact on women professionals”. This research was carried out across 250 women across Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune & Kolkata.  Some of the key findings include: 

67% of the managers’ fare well in respecting timings, there is still fairly large section (33%) that do not. The current pandemic had given an opportunity for men to share the load, however we seemed to have given that a miss. Managers, mostly males haven’t been sensitive to this aspect resulting in creating higher stress levels for women.  

40% face high levels of anxiety and stress during the current WFH situation. Women have been victims to “double burden syndrome” where they are now expected to double up on the home chores with increased work load from the office too impacting their mental wellbeing to a great extent. 

Over 50% are facing motivational challenges in the WFH scenario.

A decrease in performance and a drop in motivation, end up extending the amount of time required for each task for 75% of women surveyed. With the current business scenario, over 55% of job losses comprise of women. This has resulted in women not wanting to take the risk of speaking up for work-life balance. Hence they see ending up working longer hours in the post covid world. 

Micromanaging leads to trust issues, motivation drops and an increase in anxiety and stress for over 35% women. Most male managers carry an unconscious bias towards women employees. They are not cognisant to the load that a women colleague goes through managing the home responsibilities as well as competing at the workplace for recognition. The bias that when a woman is at home, she will not be productive has resulted in them micromanaging their women reportees. 

“The current pandemic has given an opportunity to look at gender equality under a new lens. Leaders can make remote working more inclusive by developing policies that mitigate biases against female employees. Rigid work schedules, supervisor inflexibility, and lack of inclusivity pose enormous challenges for women right now. Coaching the male managers to develop more empathy for various roles a woman juggles during work from home (WFH) & sensitivity programs for male colleagues to be more supportive within their families & work are two areas that need immediate attention. If this isn’t handled right now, it could have a telling impact on the mental wellbeing of women. This will result in a large part of the workforce dropping off the career journey and thereby push the gender diversity charter back by many decades.” said Karthik Nagendra - Co-Founder, Pink Ladder.