It’s just past 10 am and the husband, on his third virtual meeting today, is working non-stop in our home office. The son has taken over the family room to attend a virtual classes and play video games.
Thus, each day, the lady of the house finds herself carrying her laptop and tea around trying to find a quiet place to work. Before the pandemic, she never needed a dedicated space at home for work. But that’s no longer the case.
Selling the idea of working from home
Even though the study was a male space for leisure and occasional work, the home was largely seen “ and championed “ as a place that fostered family life.
Yet companies that sold office supplies saw the home as an untapped market. All they needed to do was convince Americans that being able to work from home was a form of convenience. Through advertisements, these companies encouraged Americans to create distinct spaces for work that needed to be properly outfitted with office equipment.
When PCs replaced typewriters, computer companies such as Apple and IBM geared their ads towards professionals, depicting their products as tools that would allow them to telecommute, run a business out of the home or make it easier for kids to complete homework.
As these technologies started appearing in more and more homes, families started to wonder where to put them.
Popular culture offered some models. In the sitcom “Leave It to Beaver,” the study of the father is equipped with bookshelves, a globe, two leather chairs, a desk and a telephone. It’s a place where Ward occasionally works from home in the evening and relaxes during the weekend.
Then, during the postwar period, typewriter and telephone companies didn’t just advertise to men. They also sought to entice middle-class women. However, unlike men, women’s workspaces in were often depicted as a planning desk in the kitchen or in the master bedroom. Rarely, if ever, did they have their own space.
Where to put office equipment was another issue. Placing it in the master bedroom interfered with the perceived functions of the bedroom: intimacy and relaxation. A PC in the living room competed with the television, while office equipment in the kitchen or dining room impeded the ability to work uninterrupted by other family members. For these reasons, advertisements and computing magazines in the 1980s began to recommend new spaces dedicated exclusively to PCs, such as the home office or a “hobby room.”
In the end, all those companies’ advertising dollars paid off. We were working from home in greater numbers before the pandemic, and the number has since risen as offices around the country shuttered. But we’re still stuck with the same issues of too much work and not enough space to do it “ with women often getting the short end of the stick.
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History of the ‘home office’
To better understand the makeshift nature of workspaces at home“ and why the spaces are often gendered “ it’s important to look at how the home office first emerged as a distinct space.
In the 18th century, three separate spheres of domestic activity started to appear in middle-class and wealthy single-family homes. There was a social area for hosting guests, such as dining and living rooms; a service zone, which included the kitchen, cellar and laundry; and a sleeping area, which was the most private part of the house.
What we now call the home office emerged from generically named “chamber” rooms used by both men and women prior to the 19th century later interchangeably referred to as library, den or study.
By the late 19th century, the space became primarily reserved for male professionals to conduct business at home, indulge in scholarly pursuits, etc.
