An Employment and Housing Subcommittee hearing on home-based work focused on typically female clerical workers. The following women were found to face obstacles to conventional 9-to-5 jobs: women needing child care, displaced homemakers who lack job training and experience, rural women, disabled women, and older women who encounter job discrimination. Advantages to home-based employment included absence of transportation time and costs, saving on clothes, and flexibility of controlling one's hours and schedule. Problems were conflicts between child demands and employer deadlines and usual interruptions. Terms and conditions of employment included payment on a piecework basis, considerably less pay than office counterparts, no benefits, and no guaranteed or stable flow of work. Negative aspects of home-based work were misunderstanding and misuse of the concept of "independent contractor," shifting of costs from employers to employees, and no opportunity for career advancement. Recommendations were (1) protection of home-based workers through modifications in the Revenue Act of 1982, review of Internal Revenue Service and Employment Standards Administration enforcement programs, and employer compliance with legal definitions of employees and independent contractors; (2) dissemination of information to homeworkers regarding legal and financial differences between office and home-based clerical work; and (3) expanded child care services. (Some dissenting comments to the report are attached.) (YLB)