The Greens in Germany have demanded that Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (Social Democrats) give women in particular the right to work from home. “Working from home is particularly important for women in order to reconcile family and career,” said labor market politician Beate Müller-Gemmeke (Greens) to the “Tagesspiegel” in Berlin. It’s about time sovereignty and when you work, how long and where.
The background to this is a debate about the return from the home office to the office at companies such as SAP or Deutsche Bank. The coalition agreement already stipulates that employees should have the right to work from home in future. However, this depends on the respective profession. This goal has not yet been implemented.
Labor Minister Heil has so far only presented initial non-binding recommendations on occupational health and safety for hybrid VDU work. This is not enough for the Greens. The party is therefore calling for further protection of the right to work from home.
There has also been criticism from the trade unions. Daniel Gimpel, trade union secretary at Verdi, regrets that the project has been shelved: “The fundamental aim in future must be to enable self-determined mobile working from home.”
As far as I know, men are not excluded (others may correct me if I am mistaken). The Greens may have said that exactly because women are more affected by this issue as you said, but I don’t think men are excluded from the right. This would also violate the equality principle imho (but I am not a lawyer, so take this with a pinch of salt).
This is populism though, as the main reason women are disproportionally affected is because they more often work in low paying service jobs that can’t be shifted to home-office easily.