A new study suggests that when it comes to working from home, women in dual-income homes may get a raw deal.

The number of people primarily working from home tripled since 2019 due to the pandemic, from 5.7% (roughly 9 million people) to 17.9% (27.6 million people) in 2021, according to the U.S. Census Bureau .

The problem is, forgoing an office often results in work hours bleeding into family and home life: Theres work demands, on top of child care and housework that needs to be completed. Working women tend to shoulder more of that burden than working men, the new study out of Ohio State University suggests .

The researchers conducted two surveys for the study, both during the COVID-19 pandemic. The first survey, done earlier in the pandemic, looked at 172 married dual-earner heterosexual couples in mainland China who had at least one child.

The second survey, conducted at a later point in the pandemic, involved 60 dual-earner heterosexual couples in South Korea, some with children and some without.

The couples in each survey completed two surveys at the end of the night for 14 consecutive workdays. Each husband and wife reported their work-from-home status and the amount of work and family tasks they completed.

The researchers found that both husbands and wives completed more family-specific tasks when they had flexible schedules versus when they were working in the office.

But when wives worked remotely, husbands completed fewer family tasks than when their wives worked in the office. Wives did not complete fewer tasks when husbands worked from home.

In other words, wives working from home (vs. in office) reduced husbands family task workload, but not the other way around.

These findings suggest husbands can provide more resources and support for their wives to complete remote work tasks when they have flexibility in scheduling their work time and procedure, said Jasmine Hu, lead author of the study and professor of management at The Ohio State Universitys Fisher College of Business.