Good news, ladies: just 30 more years until men pick up their game and do as much housework as us. That’s according to data from the annual University of Melbourne and Melbourne Institute’s HILDA survey of 17,000 Australians, released this week.

Women are doing, on average, seven more hours of housework a week than men. If you’re a heterosexual married woman with children, you’re likely to spend up to 30 hours a week on chores.

So how do we fix this domestic inequality? Is it about insisting men do more? Do we need to see more blokes in Ajax commercials stressing about the in-laws dropping by unexpectedly? Partly. But perhaps more pertinently, we need to look at the messages we’re sending our children.

At times, I’ve found myself enlisting my five-year-old daughter to help with chores, because it’s just easier that way. Fortunately, she’s a rebel girl and resists it. The hard truth is that it’s common for parents to place unconscious expectations on girls to do more than their fair share.

Of course this isn’t the case for every household. There are plenty of men who do an equal amount, if not more, around the house. But we cannot ignore these statistics.