The hybrid work era heralded by the pandemic has helped slightly shift the gender gap in the workplace, according to a new analysis.  

Hybrid work arrangements offer uneven results for men and women, a white paper from the Commercial Real Estate Women Network found. Women find that hybrid work adds flexibility to their workday more so than men and say, by a wide margin compared to men, that working outside the office increases their productivity. 

“Hybrid work is here to stay and that there are tremendous benefits from it, and with no negative impact to women or professionals,” CREW CEO Alison Beddard said in an interview Wednesday. 

Office attendance has broadly settled into a hybrid rhythm, with 54% of workers in a Regus survey saying they spent at least half their week working outside the office. Women have leveraged hybrid work more than men and report better outcomes from the added flexibility, according to the CREW 2025 Network Benchmark Study report, which is published every five years in conjunction with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Real Estate. 

Across all sectors, 80% of women said the pandemic had increased their work flexibility compared to three-quarters of men. A majority of women surveyed, 53%, said that flexibility had made them more productive, compared to just 41% of men.

More women than men by a similarly wide margin said the pandemic’s impacts created more stress in their work arrangement. But more women, 33% of women surveyed compared to 30% of men, also reported that the pandemic had opened up opportunities at work. 

Women are more negatively impacted than men in fully remote roles, but promotion rates are similar for women who are in the office full time and who work hybrid schedules. Women who spend some time in the office are more likely to receive a promotion, but there was no difference whether they worked two or three days from home, research from McKinsey & Co. found. 

Relationships still matter, and those are more easily built in person, but women who have leaned into hybrid work have been as successful as their peers who spend more time in the office, Beddard said.

“Commercial real estate remains a people-oriented business where trust, collaboration, networking and relationship building matters, and that is on the professional and on the employer to ensure there are opportunities for that,” she said. 

There is a flexibility gap, with entry-level roles more likely to require more in-person time than management and executive roles. But the CREW report recommends that employers try to accommodate hybrid work rather than fight to pull employees back.

“I think it was 90% of CEOs would prefer to have their employees sitting at their desks right in front of them, something like that. But yet the disconnect is that it doesn't actually create better productivity," Beddard said.

U.S. employees remain mostly unimpressed with the push to return to the office, research from the American Management Association found. Only a quarter of employees said it increased job satisfaction, roughly a third said it helped with coaching and career development, and less than half, 42%, said it helped increase their visibility to senior leadership. 

“Coming into an office five days a week isn't that much more effective for advancement or promotion rates,” she said.