Jackie McGregor: ​​A woman’s (unpaid) work is never done and neither is the laundry

Next morning I got up to find the laundry basket full again and the bathroom looked like a crime scene.

I detest housework! Nobody notices when you do it and everyone notices when you don’t! It’s sheer drudgery!

Take my laundry (I wish you would!) No matter how many times I wash the contents of the laundry basket, it’s full again the next day! If I didn’t recognise the clothes waiting to be washed, I would suspect my family were knocking on the neighbour’s doors, asking did they want their washing done; such is the quantity I face!

“How can anyone soil so many clothes in 24 hours?” I frequently ask the laundry basket, aghast as I unload it again.

“You can do it very easily if someone else is doing the washing!” I reply on the basket’s behalf. (I have a bit of a Shirley Valentine existence, I talk to inanimate objects, it keeps me sane!)

The gender equality revolution flew straight over my house. I do all the housework and cooking. I was also a full-time carer to both parents who suffered with Alzheimer’s, whilst rearing a child, working from home and getting two books published. I am woman, hear me roar! Actually, it’s more of whimper, I’m too tired to roar.

I’m not alone in my unshared housework role. Research shows a clear majority of people in the UK agree household chores should be shared, but women generally do them.

We’ve come a long way from views of the mid-1980s, back then, 48 per cent agreed with the statement, “A man’s job is to earn money and a woman’s is to look after the home,” but in a survey conducted last year, just nine per cent agreed with this statement.

More data revealed that In the 1970s, an international campaign demanding wages for housework was launched, calling for governments to recognise the value of unpaid work done in the home, primarily by women.

The aim was to bring together people assigned to perform domestic work and housework, the majority being women, in order to change their dependency and reverse power dynamics.

As yet, there’s no wage for the life admin provided by the homemaker, nevertheless, thousands still hold down the job.

Though if someone ran an ad for the position, for example, WANTED: Household drudge, 100-hour week, no retirement, no sick leave, no Sundays off, must be good with kids and animals, would anyone apply?

The 1970s campaign sought to make the point that caring labour, mostly provided by women, is not biological destiny or ‘love’, but work that should receive a wage, and that housework is not an integral part of a woman’s nature.