Oxford Digital Ethnography Group Seminar Series

Hybrid Families: Gender, Work, and Family in the UK Tech Sector

About

What, if anything, is new (or normal) about the ‘new normal’ when it comes to the post-pandemic relationship between work, family life, and home? And, in 2024, as return-to-office (RTO) mandates grow in popularity, how might the impact on the tech workforce take shape amongst gendered lines, and reverberate beyond the workplace into the organisation of family life?

Based on interviews with couples and digital diary studies, this paper presents work-in-progress PhD research that explores the perceptions and experiences of hybrid working parents in the UK tech sector. I suggest that examining the way these workers organize and experience their lives at home and at work after the pandemic can provide an insight into both the changing and sticky normative gendered structures and expectations that shape and constrain their choices.

 

Lily is a doctoral student at The Oxford Internet Institute whose research explores the impact of the increased prevalence of hybrid work after the pandemic on family life and the experience of work for women. She holds a BA in Social Anthropology from the School of Oriental and African Studies and an MSc in Digital Anthropology from University College London.