Women at work have long accepted how societal norms and cultural expectations impacted their at‐work behaviour. Despite the fact that no one model has ever universally established a benchmark for women’s leadership, women attempted to become what they perceived others wanted them to be. Between aspiring to achieve ideal worker status and enacting a style somewhere between the stereotypical connotations of agentic and communal behaviours, women leaders expended a great deal of emotional labour to find the perfect balance. Today, the COVID‐19 pandemic has created a new, potentially untenable, challenge: to identify what working women are evaluated against to achieve excellence. This article shares a perspective of how women leaders have been evaluated during tumultuous times using historical research and examples. Based upon our findings, it appears that the communal leadership style most women are thought to naturally display may be an advantage.

Understanding that there will arrive a time when workers return to their respective places of employment, it is imperative to be ready to review and if necessary, restructure and implement certain work policies that detract from social equities. For instance, flexible work arrangements (FWA) might be one way to improve the work environment, especially as they have increased in popularity in the past two decades. While FWA may represent a means to enable workers to manage their work and life commitments, it is important to note that they may also complicate prioritization of the organizational value proposition. Further, having an FWA program and effectively supporting it are not synonymousand this bears impact on employees. This research highlights opportunities and implications for FWA management based on findings from a recent New England healthcare organization case study which illustrates how working mothers experience enacted flexible work arrangement policies. This article identifies methods for organizations and managers to improve the experience of workers who wish to or need to use FWA.

No abstract