Madrid, Spain

In a first, Spain announced its plans to launch an application which will help wives in tracking the number of household chores being performed by their husbands.

The new application aims to address the gender imbalance in housework and will log the hours spent by a family member performing household chores.

Spain's minister for gender equality and domestic violence Angela Rodriguez said that her department working on the development of the free application.

The minister stated that the application would enable women and men to log the number of hours they are spending in the house doing the chores.

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Govt plans to launch app in summer

The government is planning to release the application in the summer which will be launched as part of its 'co-responsibility plan'. “We women spend more time on domestic tasks than men,” said Rodriguez said, The Times reported.

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The minister was addressing a conference in Geneva which was discussing discrimination against women. A report was presented by the minister on women's rights in Spain at the convention.

Rodriguez said that around half of the women who participated in a survey carried out by Spain's National Statistics Institute stated the majority of their household chores are performed by them.

Comparatively, less than 15 per cent of men stated that they did the maximum house chores.

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The disparity in the division of housework has led to legal rows in Spain. In April 2017, a man was ordered to pay his ex-wife over €23,000 (almost $25,000) by a court in Cantabria for the household chores she did in their six years of marriage.

Earlier this year, a businessman was ordered by a court in Velez-Malaga to pay his ex-wife €204,624.86 (around $220,318) for performing unpaid domestic labour in 25 years of their marriage based on the minimum wage.

Now, the companies are bidding to lead the new project hoping that the application will soon be developed in the months ahead.

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A budget of €211,750 (almost $227,990) has been set aside by the government for the development of the application, reported Spain's ABC newspaper.

It is hoped that the application will bring into focus the 'invisible tasks' that women undertake in their houses as well as the 'mental load' they go through while running the home.

Citing the example of cleaning the kitchen, the gender equality minister said that women often carry out this task and also think about buying extra washing-up liquid as well as making sure enough food is available in the house.

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