Women often report that work at home jobs reduces employmentfamily stress. But men also indicate this. And some men also report that work at home jobs helps them fulfill child care or other household duties or goals. Some women see their work at home jobs income as secondary family income whereas men often see their work at home jobs income as the primary family income, but not universally. For some households the income from women’s work at home jobs is the primary income. For some men as well as for some women, work at home jobs is a second job, or "moonlighting".

Gender determinations on how families intertwine enterprise and family should be assessed. Different life-style strategies–sharing, complementary, and segregated–are possible. Value shifts are often necessary to adapt to a more family-oriented life-style, which requires establishing family and work at home jobs as the focus of one’s life, with concerns and ideas about income generation considered from this perspective. Sharing a set of goals that are regarded as worth pursuing is likely important for the work at home jobs, the family, and each individual, to prosper and succeed.

Throughout the world, parents can have their children with them while preparing products for sale, such as foodstuffs or crafts, and also have their children under watch while the products are being distributed. Or a parent can take the children along while calling on customers. Children can be studying for school while their parent who is a real estate agent is searching a computer data base for homes for sale and talking to a buyer on the phone. Parents can telecommunicate/telecommute, service equipment or animals, create products, or provide information services, while keeping a watchful eye on children and cooking supper work at home jobs. Although men and women are able to combine parenting, household, and employment activities, it often appears it is women who are left to do so. The social construction of gender in many cultures has attached these duties to women.

Some authors’ conclusions support the contention that work at home jobs can be a panacea for juggling the competing requirements of earning a living, managing a household, participating with family, and engaging in leisure. An alternative view would argue that when combining family and livelihood, the amount of interruption to livelihood activities could be stressful, detrimental to business, and perhaps not safe for children. Additionally, as it is women who conduct most of the child care and household production tasks, this scheme for linking nurturing activities with those for pay or profit serves to engender these arrangements as "women’s" and serves to keep women marginalized in status and resources. The argument is that people with more human or social-cultural capital are likely to be less marginalized, be employed in the formal economic sector, and realize higher relative incomes. On the other hand, some studies found women expressing satisfaction with the ability to accommodate both paid-work and family responsibilities through work at home jobs. More theoretically motivated studies are necessary to ascertain the family and employment dynamics, how this is related to gender among families with members engaged in work at home jobs, and whether the arrangement is satisfactory for women and men.

Power and control of space and activities are often ascribed or achieved attributes of men. Women, and children, are often low or unpaid participants with limited power and control in these family businesses or other employment activities in the at home jobs.

In rural China since the mid 1980s, household-run private businesses as well as other forms of economic enterprises have emerged . Women participate in and benefit directly and indirectly from these opportunities, especially those at home jobs. However, as at home jobs paid-work opportunities increase, women’s opportunities in rural China are often "determined and constrained by the male household head". If a household operates a business, men more than women are likely to work in the business. Men are leading the development and expansion of at home jobs while women are increasingly specializing in agricultural work.

But, in many cases, the work done by women in at home jobs family run businesses is invisible, considered as incidental and "helping out." One speculation of why this pattern is developing, especially given the long Chinese tradition of households’ being involved in sideline economic activities mainly conducted by women, is that women are regarded as "filler-ins." That is, more junior women (i.e., not the mother-in-law) are perceived in the rural Chinese culture as having no well defined economic roles. Yet, these women do a large share of any household or economic activity. They "simply did the work that needed to be done–they ‘filled-in’".

In some regions the role of women in economic development, including through at home jobs, is more explicit. Women’s household income production and industrial productivity can be braided with the cultural values concerning the moral responsibilities of women–their roles in social reproduction as caring wives and mothers. In Taiwan the "economic miracle" is sustained by policies that promote employment, including at home jobs, and the participation of married women. It was indicated that the government slogan "Living Rooms as Factories" revealed the "particularity of Taiwan’s economic development, the special roles played in it by the state, and married women’s significant contribution to it."

In this blog work at home jobs employment is defined as the work done for income in one’s work at home jobs, on one’s premises, or emanating from the work at home jobs /premises, with the worker’s having no office or consistent workspace elsewhere. A home-worker might be a plumber who schedules appointments from the home phone and stores tools and supplies in the garage, or a work at home jobs knitter who seldom leaves the house. A home-worker could be a Tupperware salesperson, a person running a food preparation microenterprise through an incentive provided to help empower people to rise above poverty, or a telecommuter for a large corporation. Likewise, a home-worker could be a person assembling parts for an automobile firm, an owner of a large landscaping or gardening enterprise, a person who has turned a crafts hobby into a modest income generating activity, or a person stuffing envelopes with discount coupons and mailing them for a company. In some households there is more than one home-worker or a home-worker working more than one home-based occupation.

What is not work at home jobs employment, as the authors of this book define it? Unpaid household production and "bringing work home from the office" are not included in the definition. Although numerous unpaid productive activities that take place at work at home jobs –nurturing children, preparing meals, scheduling doctor appointments–are valuable and necessary to the maintenance and development of individuals and their families, these are not considered to make a person a home-worker. In a similar mode, occasional paid-work can contribute to household income and an enhanced standard of living, but in many research investigations such activities would be outside the parameters set for defining and operationalizing the activities that constitute work at home jobs. Many investigators make distinctions between "casual" work at home jobs (short-term and perhaps low paid activities) and other activities that seem to fulfill a definition of "regular" employment.

A person who works only a few hours a year selling surplus vegetables from the garden, a person who occasionally repairs small motors or appliances for friends and neighbors, or a person who takes a time-limited job delivering phone books or advertisements would not be considered a home-worker in many studies. Individuals can choose to engage in work at home jobs for a number of reasons. In some cases, people become home-workers as a result of perceived lack of other employment options. Perhaps these are people living in economi-
cally marginal locations but wishing to stay there. Others choose work at home jobs to fulfill entrepreneurial or other creative dreams, including being their "own boss." Some people might do their paid-work at or from the work at home jobs because they see this as a better way of life, allowing more freedom and time for personal or family activities. There are likely many other reasons for being a home-worker.

The role gender might play in why home based jobs is undertaken in specific occupations in specific regions and the exact consequences of home based jobs for both the shorter and longer terms are not clearly known. Critics have argued that women could be choosing this option because of social notions about appropriate activities for women. In some cases the situation can be framed not as women’s freely choosing home based jobs so much as their being constrained and limited in their options. Some home based jobs can permit women to contribute to household income while attending to their main functions–child care and household production. But taking low pay for these activities also perpetuates the "reality" of women’s deserving and accepting lower economic remuneration than do men. Participation in such activities can thus be a consequence of gender construction while contributing to furthering these conventions about appropriate behavior for women and men.

There is also some evidence that women in the United States are more likely to start a home based jobs business based on a "hobby," such as gardening or crafts, and men are more likely to begin home based jobs that are based on previous experience or training. Women more than men might also charge lower prices for their products or services as well as earn less profit from their home based jobs than do men. Gender can play a role in occupations chosen and profits earned.

Home based jobs remunerated labor, like housework, tends to be invisible. home based jobs for income, unpaid labor for a home based jobs, and unpaid housework are part of a larger ideological system of gender. This larger ideological system shapes labor such that some occupations, some tasks, some processes, and some places become identified as either feminine and thus for women, or masculine and thus for men. For example, the image of the typical wage worker is often a man whose wife takes care of the family responsibilities. Women, especially mothers, are seen as having primary responsibilities for family, and thus in some cases are considered less reliable employees. When employment scripts are written with the idealized man as worker in mind, women (or men) who have family and household responsibilities can find it difficult to earn good wages.

Many scholars have suggested or studied the idea that online jobs is an opportune way of combining activities for pay or profit with family and household production activities, including activities such as nurturing of spouse or child, child or other dependent care, cooking, and household management. It also includes propinquous production activities with outcomes that are important for the development of family members and/or for the social and spiritual vitality of families and communities.

Although some research indicates that, at least in the United States, online jobs does not eliminate the necessity of hired child care, child care, food production, and household chores (i.e., household production and propinquous production activities) can be combined with employment activities so that more total work can be accomplished. In addition, workers might find new creative talents, gain self-confidence, earn income that is in many cases quite important for their families, increase their social class and quality of life, and embark on entrepreneurial activities that allow them to restructure their lives. It has also been argued that the lack of commuting time can either make people more productive or allow them more leisure or family time (online jobs) In contrast, some scholars have suggested that such combinations of household production and work for pay have actually led to the stretching of the working day with the result that workers, especially women, are suffering exploitation by employers, family members, and even themselves (online jobs).

Time can be more easily allocated to a wider range of activities simultaneously or sequentially when online jobs is the paid-work option. Time can also be perceived as more flexible and less structuring of one’s activities. It was concluded that for her sample of rural families running microbusinesses, it was the flexible use of time, rather than just its allocation, which was important for online jobs -workers. Rather than thinking of time as a finite resource to be allocated among competing demands, time for online jobs families was not uniform but flexible and integrated with daily functions. Participants reported variable work days of nonuniform hours, punctuated by breaks for specific needs–a child’s violin lesson, decorating a birthday cake, doing laundry, or reading to a child. In their nonrountinized work days and schedules, these families display a distinctive concept of "work time." As such, it may more closely approximate the older premodern rhythm . . . than the time discipline imposed by the industrial structure.

What are some of the reasons that explain why people choose stay at home jobs? In some cases it could be due to the lack of other employment opportunities. This can especially be so in rural areas, or where social customs and norms constrain or encourage women to focus on stay at home jobs and family as their primary role. In such cases, stay at home jobs for pay or profit is an acceptable alternative to gainful employment outside the home. For example, in Iran some women do stay at home jobs for pay in order to save money for their retirement, often in a secretive fashion (Aghajanian, in press). In Taiwan, married women can earn income in the "satellite factory system" and "frontroom factories" (stay at home jobs). The satellite factory system concept casts light on a hierarchical subcontracting system of manufacturing composed of many small-scale, family-centered, export-oriented factories.

The majority of these factories are located either in urban residential neighborhoods, at urban-rural conjunctions, or in the front yards of peasants. Within the factories, as mothers polish, assemble, pack, and package, their children play. These factories also contract work to stay at home jobs who have converted their living rooms for factory production. In some areas there are government schemes to help individuals or families start micro-businesses. These businesses are often stay at home jobs. Choosing to participate in this type of stay at home jobs might provide for a better standard of living, perhaps even an eventual route from poverty, welfare, or social assistance dependency. Other reasons for stay at home jobs include:

Stay at home jobs is also where many economically successful businesses begin. For example, Julie Sautter launched her $10 million a year Curves business from her home in California while raising two children under 5 years of age. In the United States the majority of people with stay at home jobs are self-employed, numbering over 5 million business owners in the early 1990s with over 2 million of these owners women. People begin stay at home jobs as a result of entrepreneurial motives, un- or underemployment, and lack of career advancement.

The authors in the blog posts that follow present the results of several studies, showing how stay at home jobs, its causes, context, and consequences, is often gender-linked. A variety of theoretical approaches are described and applied to the study of gender and stay at home jobs. The empirical studies focus on the United States and Canada; one article is a review of literature with a more global perspective. Each empirical study presents a well-developed literature review that sets the analysis in context. All of the analyses shed light on what is acknowledged worldwide as an important means for many workers to contribute to household income. Each article concludes with a discussion of what the findings imply for further research on stay at home jobs as well as interventions such as policy or education
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The studies show that there are inputs, processes, and outputs of stay at home jobs that are linked to gender. For example, the number and age of children in the homeand the gender of the home-worker are related to the decision to purchase child care. In general, unless the woman spends time away from the home that is related to her stay at home jobs, child care is not purchased. When the home-worker is a man, it is more likely that child care will be purchased, especially if there are two or more children under the age of 5 years. This pattern might reflect a gender distinction in "who watches the children," or perhaps a difference in the types of stay at home jobs that male and female home-worker perform. A clearer answer could be obtained by investigating men and women performing the same paid stay at home jobs who also had the same ages and numbers of children. Controlling in this manner could make it clearer whether the gender of the home-worker was the operative variable related to hiring outside child care.

Some people, both men and women, opt for stay at home jobs in order to fulfill desires to be at home, to be around family, to have more flexibility. Family life can be of utmost importance, and stay at home jobs can be an effective means to furthering this end. But stay at home jobs might be a choice that is not equally available to men and women, or, if available, not equally chosen by both. Perhaps women, in greater proportion than men, do opt for stay at home jobs in order to be better able to fulfill other duties to their families. What makes men who choose to work at home for family reasons different from other men? Are male home -workers who choose this life-style because of the primacy of their families more akin to female home -workers than to other male home -workers in other regards? More study is necessary to find out the influence gender plays and under what conditions.

Online jobs can be found worldwide. In some regions it is institutionalized and common, in others more novel. Some regions have experienced recent growth in this employment pattern, for a variety of not yet fully explained reasons. This type of work arrangement, including the actual work undertaken for pay or profit, either as wage laborer or business owner, as well as factors such as amount of earnings and influences on other aspects of one’s or one’s family’s life, appear to be tied to gender. Some activities or occupations are considered more masculine in nature, some more feminine. What is considered as an appropriate job for women in one region might be more appropriate for men in another region, or in another historical period in the same region. The impact of this employment on use of time, family relationship quality, quality of life, and standard of living also appears to vary by gender within and across different cultural regions, and within different households.

Theoretical and empirical understanding of online jobs has been attempted through use of several conceptual frameworks, including household adjustment and adaptation, occupational segregation, rural economic development, household strategies, systems, family management/ecology, and feminism or gender . However, a great deal of the research on this subject appears to be descriptive or conceptual in terms of its explanatory mechanisms, answering questions concerning the type, frequency, and people of online jobs. Theoretical explanations offering "because" answers to "why" questions concerning online jobs phenomena are relatively lacking. Consequently, more appears to be known worldwide about the "whats, whens, and whos" of online jobs than about theoretical explanations of gender and the dynamics of online jobs. It also appears that many studies of home-workers outside the United States take a more critical approach, whereas many studies of online jobs in the United States are of a "scientific, detached" variety.

The home jobs do raise another important question. Why do men and women seem to have different types of home jobs? It appears that although gender is not necessarily linked to being self-employed or owning one’s own business, the types of businesses and the income earned do vary by gender. Thus certain occupations and job types are en-gendered. As engendering occurs, it erects barriers to the type of employment options that are potentially available to all people.

Qualitative investigations could help explain why people choose home jobs and how this could be gender-related. When home jobs are lumped together into broad categories of occupations or industries, such distinctions concerning the meaning of the work to the individual and her or his family are covert. home jobs within similar occupations or industries, regardless of whether they are women or men, could have quite different motivations, plans, and commitments to their work and its relation to other aspects of their lives such as children, household chores, marriage, or other personal relationships.

The social construction of gender might be different within homes where home jobs for pay is conducted and those where it is not. Elucidating these differences for use in educational programs will help current and potential families to understand the consequences of home jobs to each of its family members. All family members can find satisfaction in economic, social, and psychological terms more easily if they understand and discuss the underlying nature of home jobs. Men and women can modify their attitudes and behavior when open discussion clarifies the issues.

Gender effects on income are similar in home jobs and employment away from the home–men earn more than do women. Further investigation into gender linked issues such as motivations for home jobs in general and choice of specific types of jobs in particular might clarify whether biases are operating in obtaining of capital, in training, or in other areas that determine occupational opportunities. That is, do women and men have different types of home jobs because of gender biases in the society, or do women and men choose their type of home jobs for other reasons? One of these other reasons might be gender ideology. Given the culture of the time and place, do women and men have free choice in their employment? Are some avenues of income earning closed off to members of one gender or the other? Or, do men and women have differing interests in working at or owning particular types of home jobs?

Scholars interested in the role of women in relation to development have shown the extent to which women contribute in a variety of paid and unpaid ways to social development of nations. This scholarship also enlightens scholars and other professionals as to how such contributions are related to conceptions of gender and contribute to gender construction. It includes income earning activities that are often invisible, uncounted, and undocumented because they take place in the informal economy and often in or from the jobs from home. These activities include producing items as well as selling goods and foodstuffs on the street. Although much of this is jobs from home for pay or profit, it is often not recognized in a formal way as contributing to gross domestic production or to the quality of family life. In many cases, this income adds significantly to the standard of living for the household and is produced in addition to the other jobs from home that women do.

The other jobs from home is unpaid labor for the benefit of families and communities, sometimes referred to as household production, which is devalued under capitalist industrialization. Unpaid women’s work includes child care, food growing and production, fetching of water and firewood, production of clothing for their families, and nurturing of family members. It was argued that as capitalism advances, women are included as unpaid laborers by the process of "housewifization." In addition to activities that nourish and benefit children and other family members, there might be gender differences in participation in voluntary activities that benefit schools, churches, civic organizations, and the community.

These are services that help to maintain other people and enable them to participate in education and wage earning activities and are as important to social life as any other type of labor. But in the face of the social importance of this labor, labor for pay is often considered as the only "rear" work. This is the work that is counted and statistically analyzed when the economy of a country is being considered.

Scholars have related the economic position of women to the worldwide structure of unequal labor markets. This scholarship also brings understanding of how labor, including jobs from home, can be both cause and consequence of conceptions of gender. Scholars have developed models of a household division of labor and an international division of labor with a reorganization of production that uses subcontracting to save costs and raise profits for
organizations. Some have argued that transnational organizations, in particular, have exploited jobs from home –workers.