In the late '80s, style advice urged women to commute in running shoes and keep a pair of heels at work. It's a practice that lives on, as a hypnotizing New York magazine slideshow of the "secret shoes beneath every woman's desk" attests. But there's an item of clothing women increasingly keep on standby at the office that we hear much less about: the "desk blanket."

You won't find many articles on "ways to wear" the shawl to work, and none on how it can make you look self-possessed and powerful. (It won't.) Your grandmother probably wore one, but your mother certainly did not—and for good reason. While heels can make you feel taller and imposing, shawls do the opposite. When you wear a shawl, you make yourself smaller and less defined, huddling into its folds as you type with barely exposed fingertips.

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It\'s 90 degrees outside.

Whatever your personal style, you are probably going to work in a shawl this year, next year, and the next. Call it the unwanted accessory, the outfit of last resort. A woman at a tech start-up in Virginia describes layering a blanket and a Snuggie over "thick leggings, a long-sleeve shirt, a sweatshirt, and motorcycle boots" one August. One of my own colleagues dresses in wry black turtlenecks and high-waisted pants; when she is on deadline, she cocoons herself in giant blue and pink crochet squares. I wrap up in a salmon and gray tartan, and my desk partner in a conservative navy, yellow, and red. It is the middle of summer in North America. "I wear my fleece blanket like a Sansa Stark fur," a reporter for the Kansas City Star tells me.

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"It is a CAPE," jokes another. We have one thing in common: We are freezing.

The root cause of our coldness has, by now, been well documented. As The New York Times revealed last year, we're working in offices that are chilled to suit men better than women. Not only is men's work clothing typically heavier, but men also have higher metabolic rates, meaning that their bodies produce more heat. The air around us is linked to the metabolic rates of "a 40-year-old man weighing about 154 pounds," reports the Times, a model that "may overestimate resting heat production of women by up to 35 percent." The Times article was met with an outpouring of gratitude from women (and some men) whose complaints hadn't been taken seriously, including one woman who had been told "not to touch the thermostat ever again."

Let the snacks flow freely, and feel free to nap on the modernist couch, as long as you're willing to work through the night or in frigid conditions.

We joke about the discomfort, but there are more serious issues at stake. As Fast Company reported in 2012, "When temperatures were low…employees committed 44 percent more errors and were less than half as productive as when temperatures were warm." Some companies have tried to make up for the difference between male and female metabolisms by providing employees with blankets, a move that ties in nicely with the Silicon Valley ethic that it's cool if work becomes home and home becomes work. Let the snacks flow freely, and feel free to nap on the modernist couch, as long as you're willing to work through the night or in frigid conditions.

But there's another, implicit consequence of the ubiquitous office shawl. By (literally) obscuring the way that women present themselves to the professional world, we're in danger of obscuring them more generally. If that sounds hyperbolic, consider that a woman's right to dress with authority is almost as hard won as a woman's right to hold a job.

When a woman's life revolved around the home, clothes were softer and more flowing, like the drapery of curtains. But when women joined the workforce, we began to leave home-like clothing behind: frills, trailing skirts, anything modeled on a pillow or a sofa. A 1910 newspaper article advises newly minted businesswomen that "trains, chiffon tunics, rich embroidered and beaded trimmings etc. are of course most out of place in a business office." Instead, crisp cuffs, starched shirts, and tailoring are recommended, a look inspired by sportswear—clothes that, designed for an active life, connote discipline and competitiveness (all qualities that make athleisure the logical choice for today's bankers and entrepreneurs). The shawl turns back the clock on all this.

Even the temperature reminds us that the office was built for men, and we have only recently been allowed to join.

The '70s and '80s saw the height of power dressing. Not surprisingly, John T. Molloy's 1977 classic, The Women's Dress for Success Book, which defined the businesswoman's "uniform" for a decade, is silent on the subject of shawls; by the '70s, shawls were already a throwback to the Victorian era. The closest Molloy gets to the subject is in a later book, when he recognizes the impact of a necktie worn by a woman—especially in an assertive ascot or a witty scout style. He urges caution in choosing a design "because scarves (like most accessories) either scream money, power, and ability, or secretarial pool." He's basically right: A silk swatch from Hermès can make you feel consequential, while a chunky knit throw from West Elm—suited to today's overly air-conditioned offices—can make you feel very insignificant. The office shawl struggles to convey personhood, let alone power. A rug, after all, is not an item of clothing but a soft furnishing. Wearing a blanket to stay warm indoors is the equivalent of wearing a lampshade to keep your head from the midday sun.

Then there's the question of how you wear a piece of clothing that isn't meant to exist. Two corporate dress codes that leaked in the last few years, the comically exacting UBS dress code and IB Media's rules, don't discuss shawls anywhere. They're not supposed to be part of professional life. ELLE hasn't published a spread on "business shawls." Street style bloggers, who usually pick up overlooked—even ugly—trends, have missed out on shawls too, presumably for the simple reason that we don't need shawls in the hot city streets. An archaic garment, once shut up in the home, is now shut up in our cubicles. It is near impossible to look sharp in a shawl.

"It doesn't matter what else I wear," a friend complains, "because it's covered by a blanket-scarf anyway." Meanwhile, our male colleagues seem relaxed in their loose pants and shirtsleeves. I've yet to hear of a single company adjusting its thermostat to a woman-friendly setting: Even the temperature reminds us that the office was built for men, and we have only recently been allowed to join. There's so much the workplace still hasn't given us—equal pay, leadership positions—we shouldn't be content with a makeshift fix. Somehow, the shawl is back, with all its uncomfortable symbolism. In a fairer world, we would turn up the heat instead.

Laura Marsh is a story editor at The New Republic.