RGVWE · The Role of Gender in Virtual Work Environments
Horizon Europe — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2023-03-01 → 2025-02-28
- EU contribution
- €195,915
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
The Role of Gender in Virtual Work Environments
In today’s evolving work environment, many tasks and interactions are increasingly taking place through digital platforms rather than a traditional work space. While offering flexibility and efficiency, these platforms introduce distinct features—such as potential anonymity for both employees and managers—that fundamentally alter traditional work dynamics. In addition, due to the nature of these new forms of work, employees may feel less like conventional employees in traditional settings. Previous research further suggests that gender may interact with these features, creating a risk that these digital work structures could unintentionally disadvantage women. This makes studying virtual work settings both timely and critical from a labor market and societal perspective. This project set out to investigate how digital workplace environments and their distinct attributes influence women’s engagement and work. Combining insights from psychology, strategic human capital, and information systems research, the study asks how these new work settings differ from traditional ones, and how features like visibility, platform design, and anonymity shape work dynamics across genders. The project’s findings aim to inform companies, policymakers, and platform developers, helping them to develop more inclusive digital workplaces. By identifying risks and proposing solutions, the research supports the creation of virtual work environments where all employees can thrive equally.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Virtual forms of interaction at work are gradually replacing the traditional in-person work style across many knowledge-intensive industries, and this change could signal the beginning of a lasting shift in how work is conducted. Despite obvious benefits, this emerging trend also raises an array of complex challenges, namely related to inclusiveness and participation in virtual work environment. Understanding the complexities of inclusive interactions in these digital environments, and what new challenges may arise, is a crucial issue. As a first step, this proposed research program seeks to focus on female participation and engagement on virtual work settings. In doing so, it aims to investigate: how interactions from and towards women are different compared to their male peers in virtual work environments; What are the drivers of (potential) differences? And finally, how digital platform architecture and design opportunities could be exploited to alleviate the barriers to female participation and interaction in these emerging work settings? To address these questions, a large-scale randomized vignette (survey) experiment with actual professional respondents is proposed. The results of the proposed experiment can enhance our understanding from the new virtual form of work and could generate implications for companies on how to arrange and design their virtual work environments.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- ASSOCIATION GROUPE ESSEC · Cergy Pontoise CedexCoordinatorFrance
Links
- View on CORDIS
- DOI: 10.3030/101068379
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e508150474&appId=PPGMS
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e517ff3e28&appId=PPGMS
Data: CORDIS, © European Union