Gender Equality In A Virtual Workplace

According to Seaman (2012), “a virtual workplace is one that is not located in one physical space; rather several workplaces are technologically connected (via telephones, email, and internet) without regard to time zones or geographic boundaries.” There is a wide misconception that gender equality will be answered through telecommuting. “Telecommuting is described as the use of computer and communication technology to transport work to the worker as a substitute for physical transportation of the worker to the location of the work. “(Olson, 2012). Gender equality means that women and men have equal conditions for realizing their full human rights and for contributing to, and benefit from, economic, social, cultural and political development

For example, “nearly 60 percent of women engaged in the market work are clustered traditionally in female job service, clerical, and sales position, and women make up approximately 98 percent of all secretaries, typist, and billing clerks.”(William, 1999, p.79-81).This data shows empirical data that documents the “glass ceiling effect” that keeps female workers inadequately represented in executives or managerial roles.
“The general-case glass ceiling hypothesis states that not only is it more difficult for women than for men to be promoted up levels of authority hierarchies within workplaces but also that the obstacles women face relative to men become greater as they move up the hierarchy.”(EAGLY, 2007). ‘Although women make up 46 percent of the United States labour force, the hold only 5 percent of the top level jobs.’’(Williams, 1999).
Women telecommuters are rarely promoted compared to men, however when they are, they experience a slower wage growth upon promotion, referred to as sticky floor. According to Klalie (2013), “sticky floors can be defined as few women observed in the highest cooperative position” (p.16). Both situations have little flexibility and allow most of these women to expect to do paid labour and unpaid domestic

The idyllic telecommuting vision that men “would suddenly develop a taste for house and childcare” just because they are working from home, ignore the traditional gender role differentiation regarding domestic tasks is likely to imply a very different definition of ‘the home’ for male and female telecommuters. A posited reason women decide to telecommute would be to coordinate both work life and home life. Thus continue seeing their selves as having two responsibilities, their work life and catering to domestic needs; because of these two responsibilities female telecommuters more than male telecommuters disperse paid work with child care. However, male telecommuters continue to see their selves as solely doing paid work, separating their paid work with family responsibilities. According to Williams (1999), “male telecommuters tend to have defined work space at home that are physically separated from the house while females tend to do their paid work in central areas of the house such as the kitchen.” Telecommuters expecting gender role to exchange automatically but instead, it becomes more extreme. For example female telecommuters’ primary reason for working away from the office to be hands on in unpaid domestic while doing what is expected from the paid labour; whereas, men telecommute for more job