The Home Stretch

Forty years of feminism and still women do the majority of the housework. Why? In fact, while women are making slow but steady gains on gender disparities in the workplace, at home the gap is widening - in the UK, the average heterosexual British woman puts in 12 more days of household labour per year than her male companion, while young American men are now twice as likely as their fathers to think a woman's place is in the home. And when 'having it all' so often means hiring a nanny or cleaner, is it something to aspire to? Sally Howard joins up with a cohort of feminist separatists, undertakes a day's shift with her Lithuanian cleaner, lives in a futuristic model home designed to anticipate our needs and meets latte papas and one-percent parents in this lively examination which combines history and fieldwork with her personal story. The Home Stretch is a fascinating investigation into how we got here and what the future could look like for feminism's final frontier: the domestic labour gap.

Sally Howard is a journalist specializing in gender, human rights and social trends. She is a regular contributor to Marie Claire (UK and US), the Sunday Telegraph's Stella magazine, the British Medical Journal, BBC Radio Four's From Our Own Correspondent and US feminist newsstand glossy Ms. magazine. Her first book, The Kama Sutra Diaries, was one of the Scotsman's Travel Books of the Year for 2014. She is one of the co-authors of the Sunday Times Travel magazine's coffee table book, 20 Amazing Places. She lives in London.