Working from home? It’s so much nicer if you’re a man | Emma Beddington

Ever since lockdown we've supposedly all been in it together, doing conference calls in our slippers. But in straight couples, guess who gets the spare bedroom and the proper desk?

I'm wary of gendered generalisations. They rightly raise hackles: we are unique, not defined by gender, not all men! But I was struck by one I read from Ella Risbridger in her review of Jessica Stanley's recent novel, Consider Yourself Kissed. Exploring one of its themes, Risbridger wrote: I have long noticed that in a house with one spare room and a heterosexual couple who both work from home, the spare room is where he works - with a door that shuts and perhaps even a designated desk - and she works somewhere else. (Always for good reasons, but always.)"

This stopped me in my tracks. Not because it's my experience: my husband and I are lucky enough to have an office each, and mine is bigger and objectively nicer. I get the garden view; he has the ballet of Openreach and Amazon vans. (See - not all men.) It's not Stanley's experience either: she uses the spare bedroom; her husband has half the living room, she told the Cut's Book Gossip newsletter.

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