Spain, the app arrives to divide household chores equally

An app that records the time each family member spends on household chores. The Spanish government is preparing it and expects to offer it to citizens soon, with the hope of encourage men to try harder in home.

The Spanish Secretary of State for Equality, Ángela Rodríguez, spoke about it earlier this week in Geneva to the United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination against Women: the aim is to shed light on the invisible “mental burden” weighing on womenwhen it comes to housework. “Soon we will introduce an app that will allow people to record the household chores that different family members do,” she explained, “so you can see how many hours of work each woman spends doing household chores and tidying up.”

211,750 euros have been allocated to develop the app: the idea is that it can serve to distribute chores more equally between sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, roommates or life partners, “because the division of these tasks is sometimes unequal”.

The app will also serve to underline all those «invisible jobs» necessary for the proper functioning of the house, but which often go completely unnoticed. “Although tidying up the kitchen can take 20 minutes, it all depends on whether someone has remembered to buy dish soap or has planned the shopping list,” explained Ángela Rodríguez.

And, to those who criticized the initiative, he replied with a tweet: “What those who are annoyed by the homework sharing app are really annoyed about is the possibility of having to start doing their own part at home”. On the other hand, a survey last year, carried out by Spain’s National Institute of Statistics, revealed that 45.9% of women did most of the houseworkcompared to only 14.7% of men.

– Domestic activities, women spend almost 3 hours more than men every day