Offering family-friendly policies is too narrow a solution to the problem, recent research argues, and can have unintended consequences. When women cut back at work to cope with long hours, they end up stunting their careers. And men aren’t necessarily happy to be expected to work extreme hours, either.
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“These 24/7 work cultures lock gender inequality in place, because the work-family balance problem is recognized as primarily a woman’s problem,” said Robin Ely, a professor at Harvard Business School who was a co-author of a recent study on the topic. “The very well-intentioned answer is to give women benefits, but it actually derails women’s careers. The culture of overwork affects everybody.”
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For low-wage earners, the problem is not too many hours but too few. Their schedules are often too unpredictable, and their wages have been rising only modestly. For many workers, a lack of parental leave or child care can create additional strains.

For elite workers, the challenge is the conflict between modern family life and a work culture in which long hours have become a status symbol.