As I hope your boss has told you, today is National Work-Life Balance Day. This is an initiative designed to encourage our places of employment - still, let's be honest, mostly male-controlled - to adopt healthier, family-friendly policies, even at the cost of short-term productivity. A worthy goal, we all agree, writes Frank McNally.
In view of the shock findings highlighted in this paper's second Editorial yesterday, however, I believe we now need a similar initiative in the domestic sphere.
It was a British survey that showed women in couples spending three times longer on housework than their men. But as our Editorial stated, we know that the situation here is, if anything, worse. So my proposed National Housework-Life Balance Day would encourage places of domesticity - still, let's be honest, mostly female-controlled - to adopt healthier, family-friendly policies, even at the cost of short-term hygiene.
One of the aims of National Housework-Life Balance Day, certainly, would be to encourage men to rebalance their contribution, where necessary. But the main thrust of the initiative would be to re-educate women. The message would be that they must stop sacrificing their health and well-being to impossibly high standards of personal and household cleanliness, and instead spend more quality time with their families.
This is a fraught issue, I know. The different priorities of the sexes have been a touchy subject ever since man was a neanderthal hunter and woman first fantasised about her ideal cave. Even today, most women cannot understand the primal urge that makes men want to buy the largest flat-screen television in the shop.
But if there is to be any hope of a civilised debate between our warring communities, we must first of all avoid using such culturally loaded terms as "the housework". That's half the problem right there. We know that, generally speaking, only one of the sexes decides what constitutes "the housework" and the standard to which it must be done, and it's not the sex that insisted on the 40-inch Panasonic. If women want to devolve the work, they must also devolve control, and for the house-proud female that may be too high a price. When men and women live alone, as most of us do for a time, their different priorities are given free expression. We don't need surveys to tell us that single men spend less time on housework than single women. Again, it's important not to use value-laden terms here, such as "living like slobs". But the fact is men can and will endure worse conditions than women, and hardly notice.
The problems arise when they decide to share a living-space. Typically, the woman will assume control of the space (with the exception of the TV remote) and the man, bowing to her female housework ethic, will not even contest this.
Soon, however, the tensions inherent in all imperialist situations will surface. At best, women will be frustrated at the apparent unwillingness of their partners to embrace civilisation. At worst, they will come to resemble white settlers, constantly complaining about the laziness and squalor of the indigenous people.
The most striking thing about the British survey was the contrasting results when a single man and a single woman pool their resources. Living alone, the woman spends 10 hours a week on housework, the man seven (which sounds high to me). Once they become a couple, the man's workload drops to five hours - more or less what you would expect, given the economies of scale in a merger situation. But the woman's workload suddenly increases to 15 hours. And the implication is that the man is to blame.
Is this interpretation justified? Could the woman's new workload not be at least partly due to the fact that she is now implementing a long-cherished plan to create the perfect home, free from her mother's meddling? Are magazines like Hello, with their endless parade of beautiful celebrities posing on beautiful sofas in beautiful homes, as pernicious an influence on impressionable females as we suspect? These are just some of the issues on which National Housework-Life Balance Day will encourage discussion.
The debate should also consider the pressures women place on each other in the pursuit of unrealistic standards. I can't quote statistics here, but there is strong anecdotal evidence to suggest that the visit of another female produces higher stress levels in a domestic hostess than the visit of any number of males. National Housework-Life Balance Day might look at this issue and the strain it places on families.
On a global level, there is also the question of climate change. I'm not saying men are on the side of the angels here. But it would be remiss of any debate on the rights and wrongs of housework-sharing not to note the disastrous effects of bleach and other cleaning products on the environment.
The good news for Irish women, of course, is that the men in their lives will die sooner. Whether this is a result of lack of hygiene during their single years, or massively increased exposure to it afterwards, I don't know. Perhaps it has more to do with the career pressures that this special day is designed to discourage. Whatever the reasons, in the long term, women can look forward to an average of five years during which they will have the house exactly the way they want it, with no increased labour.
In the meantime, all reasonable men will be happy to work towards a situation in which they do their fair share of the necessary chores. On their behalf, I would like to take this opportunity to reiterate our commitment to the UN interim target of 35 per cent; and to achieving this by an unspecified date, if not sooner.