Madrid: Women often complain about husbands’ or partners’ lack off effort in lending them a helping hand in household work. Even in cases where both partners are working, the fairer sex often end up with the lion’s share of activities at home.
Very soon, there could be a solution to this contentious and sensitive issue.
Spain is planning to launch an application to track how much time each family member spends on household duties.
Spain’s Secretary of State for Equality Angela Rodriguez recently announced the move at United Nations’ Committee on Elimination of Discrimination against Women in Geneva, The Guardian reported. It’s seen as a drive to improve gender equality.
According to Rodriguez, the aim is to highlight the unseen ‘mental load’ that is disproportionately held by women when it comes to household duties.
“We’ll soon be unveiling an app that will allow people to log the household chores that different members of the family perform so we can see how many hours of work we each spend on housework and thus reorder the time we spend doing that housework,” she told the UN Committee.
The software, whose total development cost was 2,11,750 euros, was made to make sure every member of the family did their part.
“We think this is an exercise that could be used at home to share the chores out between sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, or between flatmates or life partners because the division of those tasks is sometimes unequal,” Rodriguez explained.
The new app will function similarly to Splitwise, which enables users to split the cost of dining out or other expenses.
The app will “serve to highlight all the invisible jobs necessary for the smooth running of a house.”
As an example, Rodriguez said that while cleaning the kitchen may take 20 minutes, it all depends on whether someone had prepared the grocery list or remembered to get washing-up liquid.
“All of those who are offended by the household chores app are really offended by the possibility that they will have to start doing their bit at home,” Rodriquez later tweeted.
