Main content

About Woman's Hour Chore Wars

Woman's Hour Engage in Chore Wars on 麻豆官网首页入口 Radio 4

Do women clean the toilet more often than men? Who takes out the bins? And is it true that men have more time to themselves than women?

Woman鈥檚 Hour invites you to calculate the division of responsibilities in your own home using a specially created online chore calculator. The calculator will enable you and your partner or housemate to find out who does what in the house, how much free time each of you has, and how you compare to the rest of the population.

Your calculator results will be compared to UK research data provided by Professor Jonathan Gershuny from the Centre for Time Use Research, Department of Sociology at the University of Oxford.

The Chore Wars calculator is a fun quiz and being launched alongside of a week of programmes on Radio 4鈥檚 Woman鈥檚 Hour that will try to answer the difficult questions about who is really doing what in 21st century British households.

Presenter Jane Garvey will reveal the results of a ComRes poll examining the nation鈥檚 attitude to household chores 鈥 and, crucially, how the burden is split between men and women.

鈥淎nyone who thinks this is trivial has never shared a home with anyone else. We are really interested in the division of labour in the home and how it has changed since women started to work outside it.

鈥淎necdotally women say 鈥榳e are exhausted and he鈥檚 lazy!鈥 but is it true? If you are in charge of putting out the bins, does that mean you get off the ironing? How many rows are rooted in anger and resentment about who does what in our homes and how often? Has Betty Friedan鈥檚 unfulfilled housewife just been replaced by a generation of women struggling to cope with too much to do both in and out of the home? Careers, social status and even your sanity can all be affected by this.鈥 Jane Garvey.

Some of the listeners who complete the Chore Wars calculator challenge will get the chance to have their say in a programme later in the week with journalist and broadcaster Emma Barnett.