Unhelpful chore apps aimed at mother, and bitcoin’s plummeting value – MIT Technology Review

This is today's edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology.

A few years ago, Jamie Gravell needed help. She was working full time while finishing her dissertation, her son had just turned two, and the housework was piling up, even after shed repeatedly asked her husband to do more. So she downloaded Cozi. Its one example of an increasingly popular solution: chore apps designed to help families split housework more fairly. Gravells hope was that her husband would do more to lighten her load without her having to keep asking.

It was a disaster. It doesnt solve the problem: that youre nagging someone else or parenting your partner, she says. It doesnt empower or engage the other person to be a part of the family team. Within a week, Gravell had ditched the app. Cozi just didnt work, she says.

On paper, chore apps could help to solve the very real problem that women in heterosexual couples still shoulder a disproportionate amount of the housework. They could get male partners to become more like, well, partners. But as Gravell discovered, these apps might actually be doing the very opposite, by forcing womenand especially mothersto take on the additional burden of using technology to assign tasks. Read the full story.

Tanya Basu

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Unhelpful chore apps aimed at mother, and bitcoin's plummeting value - MIT Technology Review