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Compared to the years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, more workers today seemingly have choice over where, when and how they do their work. However, gender inequalities at work and at home persist, which may impact perceptions of choice. Thus, researchers must investigate the potential impact of gender and domestic responsibilities on perceptions of work-related options, including perceptions of workspace choice.

Using an original dataset with workers in North America, South America, Europe and Asia (N = 3,147), the authors conducted logistic regression analyses to explore whether workers felt they had a choice in where they do their work (workspace choice). In addition to gender, the authors considered the effect of domestic responsibilities (childcare and housework) on worker perceptions of workspace choice.

In the paper's initial regression, the authors found that men (OR: 1.24; 95%CI 1.04–1.48) as well as workers reporting that a partner was responsible for all or most of the housework (OR: 1.80; 95%CI 1.34–2.40) and childcare (OR 1.51; 95%CI 1.09–2.09) reported feeling a greater sense of workspace choice. Simultaneously, follow-up regression analyses found that women and men whose partners had a greater share of domestic responsibility had amplified perceptions of choice. However, surprisingly, men who claimed primary responsibility for domestic work also reported more choice over workspace.

Using an international sample, the authors explore gender inequities in worker perceptions of workspace choice. The authors' findings suggest that domestic responsibilities interact with gender in interesting ways, leading to differences in perceptions of choice in the post-pandemic workplace.

The purpose of this paper is to study the experiences of middle-class working mothers from the ITES (Information Technology Enabled Service) sector in India during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their experiences of work from home are studied in the backdrop of the ideal worker model at work and the adult worker model at home. Further, the study aims to identify the need for sustainable, inclusive practices for working mothers in Indian organizations to break the male breadwinner model in middle-class households.

A qualitative approach to collect data from 39 middle-class mothers working in MNCs in four metro cities in India. The semi-structured, in-depth interviews focused on their experiences of motherhood, care and work before, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

The pandemic made it evident that the ideal worker model in organizations and the adult worker model at home were illusions for working mothers. The results indicate a continued obligation of the “ideal worker culture” at organizations, even during the health crisis. It made the working mothers realize that they were chasing both the (ideal worker and adult worker) norms but could never achieve them. Subsequently, the male breadwinner model was reinforced at home due to the matrix of motherhood, care and work during the pandemic. The study concludes by arguing the reconstruction of the ideal worker image to make workplaces more inclusive for working mothers.

The study is placed in the context of Indian middle-class motherhood during the pandemic, a demography less explored in the literature. The paper puts forth various myths constituting the gendered realities of Indian middle-class motherhood. It also discusses sustainable, inclusive workplace practices for mothers from their future workplaces' standpoint, especially in post-pandemic times.

This study explored the challenges academics faced with work structures during the COVID-19 pandemic and their implications for their work–life balance (WLB).

Relying on the interpretative paradigm and the qualitative research method, the dataset consists of semi-structured interviews with 43 academics in the United Kingdom.

This study’s findings indicate that academics in the UK experience issues around increased boundary permeability between work and nonwork domains and role overlap, which engender the transfer of negative rather than positive spillover experiences and exacerbate negative consequences to the well-being of academics. ICTs also reinforced gendered work-family boundaries and generated more negative work–life/family spillover for women than for men.

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) need to address ICT-related health issues through better work designs and HR initiatives that respond to the health requirements of academics. Policymakers should be futuristic and ensure comprehensive work–life policies for academics, which are necessary for humanising overall organisational well-being.

Although COVID-19 challenges are common to all workers, the experiences and effects on specific workers (in this case, UK academics) within specific national jurisdictions play out differentially, and they are often experienced with different levels of depth and intensity.

COVID-19 has had various effects on women’s labour supply worldwide. This study investigates how women’s labour market outcomes in the MENA region have been affected by the stringency of governments’ COVID-19 responses and school closures. We examine whether women, particularly those with children at young age, reduced their labour supply to take care of their families during the pandemic.

To investigate whether having a family results in an extra penalty to women’s labour market outcomes, we compare single women to married women and mothers. Using the ERF COVID-19 MENA Monitor Household Surveys, we analyse the key conditions underlying women’s labour market outcomes: (1) wage earnings and labour market status including remaining formally employed, informally, unpaid or self-employed, unemployed or out of the labour force and (2) becoming permanently terminated, being suspended, seeing a reduction in the hours worked or wages, or seeing a delay in one’s wage payments because of COVID-19. Ordered probit and multinomial logit are employed in the case of categorical outcomes, and linear models for wage earnings.

Women, regardless of whether they have children or not, appear to join the labour market out of necessity to help their families in the times of crisis. Child-caring women who are economically inactive are also more likely to enter the labour market. There is little difference between the negative experiences of women with children and child-free women in regard to their monthly pay reduction or delay, or contract termination, but women with children were more likely to experience reduction in hours worked throughout the pandemic.

These findings may not have causal interpretation facilitating accurate inference. This is because of potential omitted variables such as endogenous motivation of women in different circumstances, latent changes in the division of domestic work between care-giving and other household members, or selective sample attrition.

Our analysis explores the multiple channels in which the pandemic has affected the labour outcomes of MENA-region women. Our findings highlight the challenges that hamper the labour market participation of women, and suggest that public policy should strive to balance the share of unpaid care work between men and women and increase men’s involvement, through measures that support child-bearing age women’s engagement in the private sector during crises, invest in childcare services and support decent job creation for all.

As women perform most household chores and other nonproductive work, gender-based division of labor in the home has now been identified as a barrier to gender equality. The objective of this study is to assess the effects of gender distribution of housework especially for women and investigate the factors influencing the total hours spent on house chores in Bangladesh.

This study adopted a quantitative approach based on survey data obtained from 200 households in the Madaripur and Gopalganj districts of Bangladesh. To analyze the obtained data, the partial least squares (PLS) regression was used.

According to this study, demographic and socioeconomic factors of women, and gender are influencing the total hours spent in housework. Women were observed to have a positive relationship with empowerment but a negative relationship with social perception. Social perception was further observed to have a significant impact on the total number of hours expended by women on house chores.

The study suggests that the importance of sharing the burden of household work be taught in schools and community-based awareness programs so that it becomes ingrained as a social and cultural practice. Furthermore, the government should conduct a proper assessment that recognizes unpaid housework by women as an important factor in inclusive sustainable development.

Issues of inequality in the division of labor in household activities are barely recognized in Bangladesh. Therefore, this study collected primary data to assess the effects of gender on the distribution of housework. The findings of the study will help policymakers and academicians to better understand the gender-based division of household labor.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-03-2023-0195.

This paper aims to explore the implications of algorithmic management on careers and employment relationships in the Nigerian gig economy. Specifically, drawing on labour process theory (LPT), this study provides an understanding of the production relations beyond the “traditional standard” to “nonstandard” forms of employment in a gig economy mediated by digital platforms or digital forms of work, especially on ride-hailing platforms (Uber and Bolt).

This study adopted the interpretive qualitative approach and a semi-structured interview of 49 participants, including 46 platform drivers and 3 platform managers from Uber and Bolt.

This study addresses the theoretical underpinnings of the LPT as it relates to algorithmic management and control in the digital platform economy. The study revealed that, despite the ultra-precarious working conditions and persistent uncertainty in employment relations under algorithmic management, the underlying key factors that motivate workers to engage in digital platform work include higher job flexibility and autonomy, as well as having a source of income. This study captured the human-digital interface and labour processes related to digital platform work in Nigeria. Findings of this study also revealed that algorithmic management enables a transactional exchange between platform providers and drivers, while relational exchanges occur between drivers and customers/passengers. Finally, this study highlighted the perceived impact of algorithmic management on the attitude and performance of workers.

The research presents an interesting case study to investigate the influence of algorithmic management and labour processes on employment relationships in the largest emerging economy in Africa.

This study examines the dynamics of multidimensional poverty in Nigeria from 2003 to 2018, focusing on women and children, to understand the reality of poverty in Nigeria, where poverty reduction has been stagnant.

This study employed the first-order dominance (FOD) methodology to conduct a multidimensional analysis of poverty among households, women and children in Nigeria, using data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) conducted in 2003, 2008, 2013 and 2018. We examined how the relative position of multidimensional poverty in each zone has changed for approximately 20 years.

The results indicated that the north-south poverty gap in Nigeria persisted as of 2018 and, regarding within the north and south, changes in the relative pecking order of poverty between the zones have occurred considerably over the past two decades. Different trends were also observed for child and female poverty, suggesting the influence of the unique dimensions of poverty and cultural differences.

This study is the first poverty analysis to apply the FOD approach to children and women in Nigeria, the country with the highest poverty, over a relatively long period of 2003–2018.

The study adopts an intersectional approach to identify the key dimension(s) that reproduce inequalities in women's subsistence entrepreneurship within urban-poor settings in the global south.

The in-depth case study is based on 44 semi-structured interviews and four focus-group discussions with women entrepreneurs based within urban-poor dwellings in the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

The authors contribute to the literature by identifying how intersecting socio-class and socioeconomic inequalities, and patriarchal norms of izzat (meaning: honour, respect) and purdah (or veil), perpetuate disadvantage for women entrepreneurs producing and/or selling business goods and services.

The findings challenge the view of entrepreneurship as a meritocratic and neutral activity for social emancipation. The authors argue that multiple social hierarchies and inequalities operate simultaneously, but how these are understood, exercised and reproduce disadvantage for women entrepreneurs, depends on their social class. The authors propose a triple bind of domestic, market and societal inequalities as a heuristic framework for understanding intersecting inequalities, patriarchy and subsistence entrepreneurship in Pakistan, specifically the global south.

This study focuses on the work from home experiences of professional, middle and upper middle class married women with children in India during the COVID-19-induced lockdowns. This study aims to examine the experiences of changing nature of work and gendered realities of work–life balance for working mothers while working from home during the pandemic.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight working mothers at three different time points during the lockdown in the city of Hyderabad in India.

A thematic analysis revealed changed work practices that required adapting, reinventing and reimagining new ways of working. This was time consuming albeit a satisfying experience for working mothers. At the same time, the blurring between home and work meant working mothers were operating without an off button.

The findings show that the existing gender inequalities in sharing the domestic burden unravelled fast in the absence of support structures.

The authors give voice to the lived experiences of working mothers of managing both work and home and how they navigated challenges during the lockdown.

Although the extant literature has already recognised the negative impact of homebound responsibilities on women's entrepreneurship during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is yet to know whether and how the family has any other role in women's businesses during this critical period. This research aims to explore the patronising and patriarchal roles of the family regarding women's small businesses in a developing nation during the pandemic.

This feminist study is based on the interviews of women business-owners of a highly patriarchal developing nation, Bangladesh. During the period of the interview, Bangladesh was one of the top ten regions of the world in terms of the identified coronavirus cases.

The research unveils work-family enrichment by illustrating the help of family members in meeting the challenges of the pandemic period regarding women's certain business activities, such as the innovative production process. Besides, the study reveals the assisting and, in some cases, the non-cooperative approaches of family members concerning additional homebound responsibilities that affect work-family conflict during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Whereas the existing literature on women's entrepreneurship regarding the family revolves around work-family conflict due to maternal or caregiving responsibilities during the COVID-19 period, this feminist study substantially contributes to the understanding by revealing how family members help women by getting involved in business activities. It further enriches the prevailing knowledge regarding assisting or hindering activities of family members concerning domestic activities that affect women's businesses during the pandemic.