I fear women's careers will be left behind in gender divide over returning to offices: Christa Ackroyd

I have made at least two cups of coffee, dead headed the roses and walked the dog. I also don’t do silence, which is why the radio is on and the cricket is blaring from the TV in the living room. I have never worked alone because I can’t think alone. Just as I can’t think when wearing shoes, though I totally accept that’s just me being weird.

The trouble is I am, in the words of Barbra Streisand, one of those people who needs people. Without people I don’t function. Without people I don’t laugh. Without people I don’t create, and without people I can’t be at my best. I like to believe I am self confident, but I know I am not self sufficient. Nor do I want to be. Which is why the new and growing trend for remote working, which for most translates as working from home, would never be for me.

I dread to think what chaos my life would become. Not to mention the loneliness of no interaction. Because make no mistake, that is a lesson we should have learned during the pandemic. Ask most people what they missed and they would say friends and relatives, in other words - people.

So why, now when we are slowly coming out of the dark days, are we seeing working from what should be the sanctuary of our own four walls as a possible permanent solution? And don’t tell me a Zoom meeting can ever create the same camaraderie as a face to face experience. Because I don’t believe you. It may be convenient, but for who exactly?

I genuinely believe as pack animals we are not meant to live, or indeed work, in isolation. I also believe that separating a busy work life from home life is the only salvation for our sanity. Not only that, but I am of the opinion that together we are more creative and achieve more. And I am beginning to fear the real reason we are going down this route post pandemic is it’s cheaper for companies to abandon their offices.

Or that women in particular see it as a solution to child care because they have struggled to combine both during the Covid crisis. Either that or the last 18 months has genuinely stripped people of their confidence in being together again.

Whatever the reasoning, no one will ever persuade me that working from home is the answer. What is more it could, in my humble opinion, set back the gender equality debate decades.

Let me explain why. Yes, there are a handful of women who appear to be some kind of ‘superwoman’. I have not met many and those that I have met have certainly left me feeling somewhat inadequate.

These women seemingly can do everything at once; hold down a high powered job and create the perfect home environment and still come out smiling. I do not happen to believe they are the majority. Not only that but they usually have the financial wherewithal to be able to do so. And that means they are well on with their careers, careers largely shaped in the office.

Those who seem organised and confident predominately have enough space in the house to have a separate work environment and enough money in the bank to ensure that child care and housework are not their sole responsibility. Because one thing is true, no woman can do it all and statistics have shown that particularly in the pandemic most women have taken on even more domestic responsibilities than dare I say their male partners.

This week a survey of our major towns and cities suggested that only about one fifth of the workforce has gone back to the office. Dare I suggest most will be men. Perhaps that’s because women have decided after such unsettling, disorganised times it is easier to work from home. But it isn’t for the vast majority and never will be.

So here is what I fear may happen. The men will rush back to the offices where the mere fact that they are visible will mean their careers progress unhindered. They will be mentored and developed more successfully than women for the simple reason they are there. Let us be honest, men tend to be better at talking the talk and walking the walk than women.

Meanwhile, whatever the good intentions of those companies that have decided remote working is a blueprint for the future, women will potentially be left out of sight and out of mind. And we haven’t fought for decades to be seen as equal in the workplace to be left behind again.

In my view, in the office as in life you simply have to be in it to win it. Not just to be noticed, to be appreciated and to progress, but to have the confidence to do so. And being part of office banter is part of that progression. And you can’t have any of that while your sink is full of pots, your children are running riot in the room next door and your office doubles up as the kitchen table as you struggle to look composed on a conference call.

Of course I am in favour of flexible working. Of course I can see the advantages of an employment pool without geographical boundaries. Of course I understand after the most stressful economic period in history why companies may want to abandon their office space. If you can juggle soot with home working you deserve a medal not as has been suggested a cut in your wage.

But the choice should be genuinely yours. We must all feel empowered to say, ‘I want to come back to the office’. Because in the words of Barbra, there is nothing wrong with admitting that people who need people really are the luckiest people in the world.

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