Remote work ‘a refuge’ from gender discrimination, study finds

Shifting all women to remote work isn’t the takeaway; rather companies also should try to eliminate workplace bias itself, a study author said.

March 3, 2025 - HR Dive
Ginger Christ, Editor

Dive Brief:

• Remote work can serve as a “protective shield” and “a refuge” against gender discrimination for women, according to the results of a study published in Organizational Science in December and promoted by the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management Feb. 27.
• Of the more than 1,000 professional women with hybrid jobs who were surveyed, 31% reported experiencing gender discrimination when they were at their physical workplace, compared to 17% when working remotely.
• Gender discrimination on-site was more common for younger women, with 31% who reported experiencing it, compared to 26% of older women, the survey found. For younger women, gender discrimination dropped to 14% when they worked remotely.

Dive Insight:

“It’s rare to uncover a finding that applies so consistently across so many people working under so many different conditions,” Laura Doering, an associate professor of strategic management at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and one of the study’s authors, said in a post regarding the findings. “It didn’t matter how we sliced the data.”

Doering said the prevalence of on-site gender discrimination “could erode women’s job satisfaction and increase burnout.”

“Over time, this could make it harder to retain talented employees and could negatively affect team performance,” Doering said.

Doering said the takeaway from the results isn’t “that remote work is the ultimate solution to gender discrimination.” Instead, the findings show that companies should retain remote work options but also try to eliminate workplace bias itself, she said.

“It’s important to consider why women would be experiencing gender discrimination in the first place,” Doering said. “I would encourage managers who learn about this research to do the hard work of addressing gender discrimination rather than pushing women into remote roles as a way of trying to get around the issue.”

As more companies mandate a return to the office, the benefits lean toward male workers, Caroline Fairchild, editor-in-chief at Lean In and the organization’s VP of education, previously told HR Dive.

She pointed to data shared in a joint Lean In and McKinsey report that showed that men benefit “disproportionately” from working on-site. Men were more likely to say they knew about decisions affecting them when they went into the office, that they felt more connected to the organization’s mission and that they received the mentorship they needed, she said.