When Sophie’s bosses promised a working policy that guaranteed continued hybrid working after the pandemic, she knew it was the perfect time to start a family. Then, with one back-to-office mandate, everything changed.
“We started a family, but then came an announcement from the Cabinet Office in November 2023 that they were mandating to go back to the office, and overnight everything changed,” says Sophie*, a statistician who works for the Office of National Statistics (ONS) and member of Public and Commercial Services Union.
“From having maximum flexibility over where we work to being mandated back to the office was a massive shock. The mandates are variable, but for me personally, I’m expected to attend the office for 40% of my time,” she tells GLAMOUR. “It's hugely impacted my wellbeing. The reduction in working flexibility coupled with the cost of childcare and transport means we cannot afford to have a second child – we are living month to month as it is. The childcare options are minimal, and we both already had to go part-time to make the childcare work."
It was still working in hybrid, so the ONS was entitled to make the change, but the financial impact on the family was huge.
High childcare costs, sexist attitudes, and a lack of flexible working options are forcing mothers out of the workplace.
A spokesperson for the Office for National Statistics said:
“Our hybrid working model was introduced under a Civil Service-wide agreement on office attendance. It has been implemented flexibly, recognising the individual needs of staff members where these are brought to our attention.
“We still believe firmly that a reasonable level of office attendance – in line with the wider Civil Service – is in the best interests of the ONS and all our colleagues. Face-to-face interaction helps people to build working relationships and supports collaboration, innovation and skills development.”
Since the COVID pandemic proved the effectiveness of remote work, flexible working has enjoyed a long stint of success, allowing workers more freedom to fit their careers around their lives. Despite years of productive remote, hybrid, and flexible working, numerous companies and public services are implementing back-to-office mandates, transforming people’s lives, sometimes overnight, to return to the “traditional” way of working.
Women often face the consequences of these changes without much assistance from their workplaces. With women usually taking on the primary caregiver roles in families, facing higher rates of chronic illness, and being more likely to get denied flexible working, could back-to-office mandates worsen existing gender inequalities in the workplace?
The most apparent impact of return-to-office mandates on women is childcare, with women, on average, doing twice the amount of unpaid childcare compared to men. Like Sophie, writer and editor Kristin Herman found that a return to office mandate stripped her of the flexibility hybrid working had provided. “Childcare services do not match the standard nine-to-five schedule; it was hard,” she tells GLAMOUR. “Last-minute issues, like a sick child, became tougher. I relied on family, but constant schedule changes added stress. It meant less time with my kids, too.”
On average, working women take home £631 less than men per month.
With “air cover” provided by workplaces, Ann-Marie Kindlock, the founder of KINDHAUS, a parent-first coworking space and creche, says she “can change the world,” but not enough companies offer flexibility and cover for family emergencies or childcare issues, often expecting parents to figure it out independently.
Ann-Marie fears many women will be forced out of the workplace if back-to-office mandates take over. “Flexible work is critical for modern parents, especially in this childcare crisis. In black-and-white terms, you’re saying, ‘You won’t get these promotions and pay raises if you don’t comply.’ Women are already leaving the workforce in droves, with 56% leaving within the first three years or having to reduce their hours to part-time. I feel like the implications of these mandates will weigh heavily on gender equality and gender pay gap progress.”
Aside from worries over childcare, Kristin also felt that the return to the office impacted the mutual trust and respect between her and her employer. “I proved I could work well remotely, but they didn’t trust me,” she explains. “It felt more about control than productivity; it’s an outdated way of thinking.” It’s not all doom and gloom, though. Kristin surprised herself by finding joy when returning to the office, saying she missed the “casual camaraderie” of the workplace.
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Marta Rodriguez, who was unsure about the impact of returning to the office, benefited from the proximity of working in person with her colleagues. “To my surprise, I enjoyed working close to other people and working next to other people, learning from them and getting help and feedback easier and faster than working from home,” she tells GLAMOUR. “I always felt like the ‘new girl’ [working from home]. You don’t get to know your colleagues, their tastes in music, food, what they do after work until you’re next to them.”
Although she loves the newfound closeness with her workmates, Marta would prefer a hybrid model that allows her more time with her son and because she misses “having time for my own thoughts, which I don’t get on my morning commute to work.”
Some women, like Jo Hillier, are redefining their careers just to return to the office. “I used to work in charity leadership but went remote for COVID, and when it transpired that it wasn’t going to change when everything eased up, it became a real issue for me,” she tells GLAMOUR. “I’m an extrovert and get my energy from others, so I found working online very draining. So I retrained as a teacher with Now Teach because I wanted to go into a future-proofed career in terms of always being in person.”
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Childcare is undoubtedly the hottest topic of conversation when discussing the benefits of hybrid and remote roles for women, but there are other caregiving roles for which women need flexibility. Suzanne Bourne, head of carer support at Mobilise, can only thrive at her job because of work-from-home options, which enable her to balance caring for her husband, who has Parkinson’s, with her passion for work.
“The caring role sneaks up on you and goes from doing a few things to needing to do almost everything; I intentionally shaped my career to have more choice and flexibility and now work for organisations that get it,” she tells GLAMOUR. “When we talk to carers, there’s this panic about return-to-office mandates. They say things are just about working at the moment and everything will change, and there’s nothing they can do about it. For carers who may be feeling stretched already, mandatory returning to the office could be the thing that makes them give up.”
Beyond caring for others, flexible working empowers many women to care for themselves. When Molly Johnson-Jones started her career, she went into investment banking, where 5 to 6 days in the office were typical. “I was then diagnosed with a severe autoimmune disease – we’re still not 100% sure what it is, but sometimes I can’t walk,” she tells GLAMOUR. “It wasn’t that I couldn’t do the 60-70 hour weeks; I now work 60-70 hour weeks; the location was a huge barrier because I physically couldn’t get there.”
Following the abrupt departure from her first job, Molly ran a gauntlet of interviews to find a flexible job to accommodate her health. “When I did land in a flexible company, the change was remarkable. From a health perspective, I probably only get sick once a quarter now,” she says. Molly doesn’t think every employer should be beholden to flexible working but thinks transparency is the answer. She founded Flexa, a platform that enables people to search for companies based on values and needs, to prevent others from facing the same challenges she did.
For many, it's not a matter of not wanting to, but not being able to.
Across all the women who volunteered their experiences for this article, whether they wanted to return to the office or not, all of them had one question in common: but why? There is often no rhyme or reason for forcing people back into the office except for a desire to return to more traditional work methods, which often makes business London-centric, too. And it’s likely to alienate more women from the workplace in an era where patriarchal work methodologies seem to be the ultimate rulers.
“There’s patriarchy already, then you’ve got a baby, and you’re almost like a glitch in the system,” Ann-Marie says. “If you’re not white, male, non-disabled, without any caring responsibilities, then you are seen as the problem, but no, we are the solution. Our lived experiences of being different give us perspective, and we’re willing to share that perspective with the system to become a more human system, but not everybody’s ready for that conversation.”
Although the government is trying to protect flexible working with its latest bill, Molly worries that this will create a more hostile environment. “It will further alienate people, particularly women having to work flexibly,” she says. “They’ll be skipped over for promotion and othered. It won’t be culturally accepted. Then, in hiring, this could lead to further discrimination.”
“Without flexibility, millions of people can’t work,” Molly adds. “You think about the proportion of largely untapped talent, whether it’s neurodivergence, chronic illness, disability, or something else; these are people where the traditional office doesn’t suit them, but alternative working environments can. Why would we ignore such a significant portion of the population’s ability to contribute to their lives and the economy? It doesn’t make sense.”
