Source: NDTV
In order to get men to help out more at home, Spain plans to release an app that will keep track of how much time each person of a household or family spends doing housework. Angela Rodriguez, Spain’s Secretary of State for Equality, told The Guardian about the change, which is seen as a way to improve gender equality.
She says that the goal is to bring attention to the hidden “mental load” that women carry when it comes to doing housework.The plan was announced Tuesday in Geneva at a meeting of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women.
She told the UN Committee, “We’ll soon be releasing an app that lets people keep track of the chores that different family members do around the house. This way, we can see how many hours each of us spends doing housework and change the way we do it.”
She said that the new software, which cost a total of 2,11,750 euros to make, was made to make sure that every family member did their part. She also said, “We think this is an activity that could be used at home to figure out how to divide up chores between sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, flatmates, or life partners, since these tasks aren’t always split up evenly.” The app will work like Splitwise, which lets people split the cost of going out to eat or other costs.
Ms. Rodriguez said that the app will “bring to light all the invisible jobs that are necessary for a house to run well.” She gave the example that it could take 20 minutes to clean the kitchen, but it all depended on whether someone had made a shopping list or remembered to get dish soap.
Later, she wrote on Twitter, “All of those who are offended by the housework app are really offended by the idea that they might have to start helping out around the house.”
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