Remote work disparity: Men return to office, women stay home
A return to office for men only? by Gleb Tsipursky, opinion contributor - 01/13/26 9:00 AM ET
Getty ImagesA silent reshuffle is unfolding across corporate America. Office towers are refilling with men, while women continue tapping at keyboards from their kitchen tables. Far from a balanced rebound, the return-to-office push has become unmistakably gendered.
Fresh data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reveal a striking split: “the share of men who spent some time working at home decreased from 34 percent in 2023 to 29 percent in 2024, while the share of women who did so remained the same (36 percent).” The trend is clear — return to office is happening for men, not for women.
These figures sit atop an historic surge in women’s labor-force engagement. Brookings researchers note that prime-age female participation reached “77.7 percent, slightly below the highest level on record” in May 2025. Much of that momentum comes from mothers who can remain in the workforce precisely because remote options still exist.
Corporate policy explains only part of the divergence. Three structural forces amplify the effect.
One is optics. Managers still equate physical presence with ambition, and annual performance reviews still tend to reward the employee whose face is most often visible in the conference room. The message may sometimes be unspoken, but it’s unmistakable: the corner-office track still runs through the lobby turnstile.
Men, socialized to chase visible advancement, often respond to those cues by booking the earliest train and the latest return, ensuring their badges swipe first and last. Women, balancing caregiving or simply valuing autonomy, may weigh the same cues differently. Many have learned that a polished deliverable submitted at 6 a.m. from the breakfast table travels just as far as a handshake in the bullpen, and they refuse to sacrifice the flexibility that underpins that efficiency.
Moreover, male-dominated occupations in finance, tech infrastructure and heavy industry are facing louder calls to repopulate headquarters. Earnings calls routinely feature CEOs assuring investors that “culture and innovation happen in person,” language that filters down through layers of middle management as mandatory desk days. Women cluster more heavily in functions such as HR, marketing and design — roles that proved remote-friendly during the pandemic and remain so because collaboration happens in cloud-based suites rather than on whiteboards bolted to drywall. These divisions reinforce the gender split every time a new return-to-office memo hits inboxes.
Finally, social expectations. The domestic load still skews female despite modest progress since 2020. Remote work remains the most practical way to integrate school pick-ups, therapist appointments and elder-care errands into a salaried day. Employers tacitly recognize that reality by tolerating women’s flexibility while nudging men to reclaim cubicles. The result is a quiet re-segregation of labor: women secure autonomy at the cost of in-office visibility, while men win face time but surrender work-life balance — an imbalance that now shapes careers, household dynamics and ultimately the leadership pipeline itself.
Retention data in the work-from-home literature link hybrid options to higher job satisfaction and lower turnover; if women keep that benefit while men lose it, companies risk re-segregating career paths along flexibility lines. Career-progression research warns that remote workers, many of them women, already face proximity bias in the form of reduced visibility, fewer promotions and limited mentorship. A scenario in which men gain office face time and women do not could deepen those promotion gaps.
Conversely, male re-entry may backfire for firms hunting scarce talent. The Brookings analysis shows female participation now exceeds its pre-pandemic peaks, suggesting flexible roles attract a crucial share of the workforce. Requiring men to sacrifice that flexibility may push some to greener, hybrid pastures, compounding turnover.
Finally, when male remote days drop, the domestic rebalancing achieved since 2020 may erode, pulling women back into disproportionate housework — an outcome squarely at odds with corporate inclusivity pledges.
The evidence is unmistakable. Remote work in 2025 remains standard for more than a third of working women, as it was last year, yet it is rapidly slipping for men. Promotion politics, industry composition and entrenched social norms have funneled the genders down separate post-pandemic paths.
Employers crowing about successful return-to-office mandates should look closer: they have engineered a return-to-office for men only, reshaping talent pipelines and, potentially, future leadership ranks. Until advancement metrics truly reward results over chair time and genuine hybrid options extend to all employees, this new, subtler form of workplace inequality will persist.
Redefining commitment — that is, valuing output wherever the laptop sits — is no longer an HR talking point. It is the front line of gender equity in the post-COVID labor market, and the stakes rise each time another man swipes a building badge while his female colleague logs into the morning stand-up from home.
