Office mandates may be going against gender equity at home

A pandemic era trend of better burden sharing stares at a reversal

- SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL

The return-to-office (RTO) tug of war is playing out not only between bosses and employees but between spouses. Corporate insistence that workers show up at the office sets up a conflict between two-career couples at home. Many homes established new routines during the work-from-home (WFH) era that allowed them to divvy up household chores—grocery shopping, laundry, repair work—more equitably than in the past. And voluntary hybrid work schedules gave couples leeway to decide who would commute on which days. But as executives demand more days in the office and set stricter schedules, an ebbing of flexibility has led to a sense of alarm that the future will look an awful lot like the past, when women sacrificed careers for home duties.