Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is right: working from home is bad for parents and companies Working remotely has grown increasingly commonplace, thanks to improved technology; nearly 60 per cent of British companies offered some kind of remote working in 2011, according to a survey by the Confederation of British Industry, representing a huge jump from just 13 per cent in 2006. The increase in remote working is particularly high among small companies, for which the trend can lead to significant cost cuts. Ms Mayer, who famously took a two-week maternity leave, during which she - you guessed it - worked from home, has been criticised for stepping back in time with her work-from-home ban, and has been vilified, in particular, by advocates for working mothers. What damages a mother's career progression once she has children isn't her maternity leave, according to many studies (including this one) - it's her inability to function without interruption after she returns to work. Working at home when you are also the person in charge of a young child is not ideal when you are trying to cultivate a professional tone. I have done weekend interviews in which the interviewee remarks on my crying baby in the background. I've also been a harrassed editor trying to get copy in from a mother with a wailing child. We all have to do it at some point, but it is bad for our sanity, and bad for our careers. Women continue to shoulder the bulk of the childcare responsibility. Mothers are less likely to be able to answer work emails on weekends, for example, or they have to rush out the office door at five or six to make it home by dinner time, while working fathers continue to beaver away in the office - and get promotions. Using a work-at-home model as a cure for the challenges working mothers face isn't the solution; all it will guarantee is that the woman will be an imperfect mother and an imperfect worker, because she will not be able to devote herself 100 per cent to either role. As Virginia Woolf observed of (middle-class) women writers, "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction"; she needs a room - with a lock and a key - essentially, the independence of her male peers in order to produce quality work. Similiarly, mothers need the time and space to perform at work that men are granted. Otherwise, they will continue to be passed over for promotions and interesting assignments.