Many people may think of a "remote worker" as a harried mom in her bathrobe or a 20-something at a coffee shop. But that image doesn't actually reflect who is working outside the office, according to a new study.
"A remote worker, someone who does most of their work outside of their employer's location, is not a woman, is not a parent and is not a Gen-Y millennial," says Cali Williams Yost, a workplace flexibility strategist and CEO of the Flex+Strategy Group.
A Remote-Working Gender Gap
In fact, the study she commissioned finds that three out of four remote workers are men — of all ages – and just as likely to have kids as not. Yost and others attribute part of this gender gap to the kind of work women are more likely to do: jobs that can't be done remotely, like teaching and nursing.
The study, a national survey of full-time employed adults, finds that 31 percent of full-time employees do most of their work away from their employer's location, like at home, at a business center, shared office space or coffee shop.
The study also finds women are much more likely to work in a cubby or open office space, rather than a private office.
"And those cubicle, open-office-space workers were significantly more likely to say they did not increase or improve their flexibility last year, for fear of being perceived as not working hard, and [out of] fear it will hurt their career," Yost says.
To unscientifically test all this, I ventured into a Starbucks near my home in Washington, D.C. There in the back I spot a middle-aged man with a grande drink and a laptop.
Turns out it's Michael Gerson, a columnist for The Washington Post. "I do have an office, but I do most of my writing in coffee shops," he says.
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