VIRTUALITY AT WORK: A DOUBLED-EDGED SWORD FOR WOMEN’S CAREER EQUALITY?

Abstract

Organizational scholarship on virtuality and women’s career equality are growing research streams relevant to the changing nature of work. Yet these streams are underintegrated, creating a lack of nuanced understanding of how virtuality impacts gender equality. We review findings from 100 articles and synthesize two main research perspectives to develop an integrative framework of virtuality’s mixed effects for women. Studies grounded in person–environment fit theory have tended to emphasize positive effects, while those based on social role theory have examined both positive and negative effects. A critical insight from our review is that while growing virtuality holds promise for advancing gender equality by enabling opportunities for women to overcome persistent career challenges, it may simultaneously inhibit their success. However, few studies have examined these dynamics together. Our review illuminates the career-enhancing and career-damaging mechanisms through which virtuality–gender interactions concurrently improve and undermine women’s equality outcomes. These dual mechanisms create three virtuality tensions for women between: (a) work–nonwork boundary control and interference, (b) enhanced and reduced job opportunities, and (c) social integration and exclusion. We offer a research agenda that attends to both sides of these tensions, identifies their interdependencies, and examines how they operate over time.