Living in the expatriate community as a housewife and stay at home mother, I felt conflicted towards feeling privileged and the compromises I made by giving up my personal aspirations. There is a perceived lack of value in society associated with being a stay at home mother. In many respects, the community was a reflection of the power structures in capitalist society, and of the interplay between gender, class and race in creating social inequality. Men dominated the senior corporate jobs, whereas their family related responsibilities were largely fulfilled by women. The perfect employee seemed to be a person without family related responsibilities. This practice fosters gender inequality. Women may have been granted normative freedom in many modern societies; however the impact of parenthood on the participation in the labour market continues to be different for men and women.

My project blends reality and fiction to reframe the housewife’s domestic space as both sanctuary and battleground, and constitutes an observation on how gender dynamics operate. The way women are depicted by mass media pressures them to conform to gendered expectations and to internalise behaviour that encourages the perpetuation of the same gender-biased hierarchy.

Making this work was therapeutic, and a self-reflective journey. The pressure of perfection and of projecting the image of success, extending to femininity, home and an idealised nuclear family, made me question my own identity, constructed towards social acceptance in my community. As an author and subject in this project at the same time, it was daunting at first to break a taboo and express feelings that were not openly discussed among the women.

‘I’ll be late tonight’ is challenging the myth of domestic bliss and addresses the idea of home as a place of resistance, from a subjective experience, where identities involve a performative, and ultimately isolating act.