Description
Research indicates that women have been required to take on more domestic labour during the pandemic and have found juggling caring responsibilities with paid work a challenge. Less is known about how remote working is impacting on women’s ability to network. In the UN system, staff are potentially less visible while working from home and may be less able to network. Yet, remote working also has the potential to create new spaces and opportunities for networking and interaction with colleagues around the world that would otherwise have been difficult in the physical office space. Drawing on extensive in-depth interviews with employees working in headquarters and in duty stations within the UN system during the COVID pandemic, this paper explores how women and men address the liminalities of silence, absence and presence within international institutional spaces during a global pandemic and examines the tactics they use to help progress their career while in lockdown and working remotely, often from home.
