Tuesday 18th July 2023 from 19:00 for 19:30
Abingdon United Football Club (Northcourt Rd, OX14 1PL, Abingdon)
Please note our move to the third Tuesday of the month for 2023.
Domestic work is critical to health and well-being. Societies cannot function without regular meals cooked, clothes and homes cleaned, and people cared for.
It is also very time consuming and generally shared unequally within and between households.
Women continue to do more unpaid domestic work than men in the majority of households, though the extent of gender inequality when it comes to domestic work varies between societies.
Historically, technological advances – such as the rise of domestic appliances in the 1950s – have been associated with women’s increased participation in the labour market. The rising female employment and intensification of family (especially parenting) responsibilities for both men and women means there remains a large unmet demand for help with domestic work. Household robots (vacuum cleaners, lawn mowers, etc.) outnumbered all other types of robots in terms of units sold from as early as 2010. Sales of household robots have since accelerated dramatically.
In this talk Dr Hertog will explore the potential for a further transformation of unpaid domestic work with the rise of AI-powered technologies, expert predictions about the future of housework and care work, individual attitudes to using smart digital technologies to replace their own domestic work, and how this varies cross-culturally.