Gender Disparities in Valuing Remote and Hybrid Work in Latin America

Evidence on workers' willingness to pay (WTP) for location flexibility is concentrated in high-income countries; evidence from settings where formal remote work remains limited and gender gaps in formal-sector participation are large is scarce. We estimate WTP for location flexibility using a discrete choice experiment (DCE) with 4,785 working-age participants across five Latin American countries (Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru). Respondents choose between hypothetical formal job offers varying in workplace arrangement (on-site, hybrid at 80 percent remote, or fully remote) and wage within two male-dominated sectors (manufacturing and information technology). We estimate conditional logit models with choice-set fixed effects. On average, participants sacrifice 10 percent of offered wages (USD 109 per month) for a hybrid arrangement and 6 percent (USD 60) for a fully remote position. Women place larger valuations on both flexibility types than men; formal interaction tests confirm that these gender differences are statistically distinguishable. Heterogeneity by age and commuting distance is detectable in specific gender-outcome combinations; differences by caregiving status are not. Results are robust to survey weighting and to restricting the sample to attentive respondents.