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.