CULTURAL MISOGYNY 

Men prefer office working – to get away from their wives

Sam Meadows
Thu, 17 August 2023 

commuters in London

Men are twice as likely as women to go to the office to avoid their families and steal stationery, a survey has found.

Nearly a quarter of respondents to a survey gave “getting away from family” as a reason for going into the office, with men twice as likely to give this answer.

Men were also far more likely to say they go to the office to take stationery supplies for their personal use, when questioned by Runway East, a co-working space provider.


Office banter also had a greater pull for men, who are twice as likely as women to go to the office to make friends and meet people, the study found.

The research chimes with other studies, such as a report from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), published in June. It found, after the pandemic, men had returned to the office at a much higher rate than women, with women more likely to spend time doing household chores.

Research carried out by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in 2021, meanwhile, found that women were more likely to report that working from home gave them “more time to complete work and fewer distractions”.

Runway East said its findings showed that offices were not “dead”, despite many companies shifting to hybrid working in the wake of the pandemic. But it said companies would need to provide more perks, with more than one in 10 saying they liked to go to the office for access to better coffee.

Natasha Guerra, the firm’s chief executive, said: “The rhetoric is that people don’t want to go back into the office, the reality is people don’t want to commute and they want more than a desk.

“Employers need to shift their thinking from providing just the basics to providing a space to work, collaborate and enhance their experience of working.”

She added: “For some men, it would appear that it’s an opportunity to leave that pile of washing.”

The pandemic has shifted attitudes to work. The BLS study found that a third of workers did some or all of their work from home on days they worked last year – a 10 percentage-point increase compared to 2019.

Women were more likely than men to work from home – 41pc compared to 28pc – with women more than twice as likely to spend time cleaning or doing the laundry.

The ONS has previously found that the vast majority of workers – 85pc – wanted to continue hybrid working in future.