Gender and Space: Homeworking at the Dining Room Table

ABSTRACT This study investigates the construction of professional workspaces within the private sphere of the home and the effect of gender on the spatial construction of such spaces. It focuses on how teleworking from home affects men's and women's ability to make use of spatial resources, including layout, dedicated space, and location, in the creation of home workspaces. Drawing on a national survey conducted in Japan during the COVID‐19 pandemic, this study sheds light on gender disparities in the construction of home workspaces. This study finds that professional workspaces in the home have devolved into “private” professional spaces (with a closed layout and dedicated space, located away from the center of the house) dominated by men and “public” professional spaces (with an open layout and shared table, located at the center of the house) dominated by women. Furthermore, whereas the regression coefficients for having children in the household on the likelihood of working in the public space within the home are positive for women, they are negative for men. Additionally, having a professional, technical, or managerial occupation is negatively associated with working in the dining/living room for men only. Therefore, the introduction of paid work to the private sphere likely results in the re‐construction of gendered professional space within the home with different degrees of access to spatial resources for men and women. Women's ability to control space may further be limited within the home. The gendered and unequal distribution of spaces in the home are novel mechanisms that reproduce gendered power differentials.