A high-tech washing machine called Your Turn could soon enforce gender equality in every British household.
Pep Torres, a Spanish designer, has exploited fingerprint recognition technology to subvert what was supposed to be the perfect Father's Day gift.
His washing machine is programmed to prevent the same person using it twice in a row to try to ensure that men do their share of domestic chores.
"I thought it would be good to finish with macho man from the ice age who doesn't do anything around the house except drink beers," Torres, of the agency DeBuenaTinta in Barcelona, told the BBC World Service program Everywoman broadcast yesterday.
"Spain is changing a lot, and I wanted to come up with an invention to enable men to do more around the home," he said.
Torres was originally approached by a white goods manufacturer and asked to design an innovative Father's Day present. It has inevitably appealed more to women who relish the opportunity of banishing washing day blues.
"It was a tongue-in-cheek idea which seemed to catch the imagination," Torres said.
For Your Turn to function as a regulator of domestic harmony, both partners are required to register their fingerprints on the scanner while it is linked to a home computer.
If men are inclined to cheat, Torres suggests, they could suffer a small forfeit: "The man can leave his finger at home ... we have 10 fingers, so he won't miss one -- well, you don't use the little finger a lot."
The implied criticism that it is time for men to pull their fingers out follows a shift in popular opinion away from the charms of machismo culture. Forty percent of men in Spain reportedly do no housework at all.
Last month a law was introduced in Spain to oblige men to "share domestic responsibilities and the care and attention" of children and elderly relatives. Failure to meet the obligations, it stipulated, would be taken into consideration by judges when determining the terms of divorces.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS