chores

Relationship conversations & housework fights

Worried that inviting your partner to take the quiz will start a fight? Read this first.

A common response to the Multi-Player Housework Preferences quiz is worry that it will start a fight. The last year has not been a great time for many relationships – between lockdowns, school closures, cabin fever and social isolation, we’re all feeling a bit frayed. And housework can be fertile ground for conflict. Many of the people we spoke to when we launched the latest quiz were worried that if… Read More »Worried that inviting your partner to take the quiz will start a fight? Read this first.

Housework Preferences Image

Launch News: New Multi-Player Housework Preference Quiz

Today we’re launching our latest quiz to help households understand imbalances and how to fix them – but with a twist. The new Housework Preference quiz is multi-player and helps you and your partner work together to find the quick-wins for how you can correct household imbalances and improve your relationship and wellbeing. This post explains why housework preference matters, and how the quiz works, so you and your partner… Read More »Launch News: New Multi-Player Housework Preference Quiz

Women's movement protesting for fair pay

Wages for Housework: After 123 years, women are still treated as free domestic labour

Women have been calling for housework to be paid work for 120 years. So let’s look at the history of women’s unpaid work, particularly how the Wages for Housework movement from the 1970s is still relevant today – increasingly so as this economic crisis deepens. Read on to explore the  history of this movement, where we are now, and how we can accelerate the move towards equality. The Wages for… Read More »Wages for Housework: After 123 years, women are still treated as free domestic labour

Women's unpaid work & economic value

Women’s unpaid housework is the fourth largest economy in the world – it’s time we valued it

According to Oxfam, the economic value of the unpaid housework done by women globally in 2019 was $10.9 trillion. This is more than the combined 2018 revenue of the world’s 50 largest companies. Or, put another way, bigger than the GDP of every country in the world except the US, China and India. That makes women’s unpaid work the fourth largest economy in the world. That is obviously significant at… Read More »Women’s unpaid housework is the fourth largest economy in the world – it’s time we valued it

Women juggling housework and childcare

Are They Just Trying To Get Out Of Doing Housework?

The Challenge of Different Standards (Part One) Do you and your partner have different standards for housework, or different ideas of what a task being done properly means? This common problem is called the Standards Challenge. In this three part series we explore why it happens, and how to fix it. This introductory post looks at why the standards challenge occurs and where your partner might be coming from. Part… Read More »Are They Just Trying To Get Out Of Doing Housework?

Steering wheel showing post-it notes of things to be done

Introducing ThirdShift

Welcome to the ThirdShift Blog! ThirdShift is creating a more equal world by changing the way busy parents work and stay connected. Originally founded to solve the problem of Mental Load – the mental work of managing and organising a household. This is work that’s disproportionately done by women, is mostly invisible, and continues to be a significant barrier to gender equality in the workplace. Mental Load goes hand in… Read More »Introducing ThirdShift