IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/labeco/v97y2025ics092753712500137x.html

Gender differences in preferences for flexible work hours: Experimental evidence from an online freelancing platform

Author

Listed:
  • Banerjee, Rakesh
  • Bharati, Tushar
  • Fakir, Adnan M.S.
  • Qian, Yiwei
  • Sunder, Naveen

Abstract

We conducted an experiment on a major international online freelancing platform to examine how increased flexibility in daily work hours affects female participation. We post identical job advertisements (for 320 jobs) covering a wide range of tasks (80 distinct tasks) that differ only in flexibility and the wage offered. Comparing the numbers of applicants for these jobs, we find that, while both men and women prefer flexibility, the elasticity of response for women is twice that for men. Flexible jobs attracted 24% more women and 12% more men than inflexible ones. Importantly, these increases did not compromise the quality of the applications. In contrast, there is suggestive evidence that flexible jobs attracted higher-quality female candidates. Our findings have significant implications for understanding gender disparities in labor market outcomes and for shaping equity-focused policies of organizations.

Suggested Citation

  • Banerjee, Rakesh & Bharati, Tushar & Fakir, Adnan M.S. & Qian, Yiwei & Sunder, Naveen, 2025. "Gender differences in preferences for flexible work hours: Experimental evidence from an online freelancing platform," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:labeco:v:97:y:2025:i:c:s092753712500137x
    DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102813
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092753712500137X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102813?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Maria Akhtar & Azmat Yar Khan & Aneeqa Zubair, 2026. "Metaverse Insights: Boosting Freelancers’ Performance via Work Flexibility and Career Adaptability in the Lens of Social Cognitive Perspective," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 17(1), pages 2531-2554, February.
    3. Umar Daraz & Štefan Bojnec & Younas Khan, 2025. "Gender Role Reversal in Gig Economy Households: A Sociological Insight from Southeast Asia with Evidence from Pakistan," Societies, MDPI, vol. 15(10), pages 1-24, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply
    • O14 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Industrialization; Manufacturing and Service Industries; Choice of Technology
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • L86 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Information and Internet Services; Computer Software

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:labeco:v:97:y:2025:i:c:s092753712500137x. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/labeco .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.