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New washing machine cracks down on layabout men

"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."

Pep Torres, the designer of the Your Turn washing machine

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.
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