‘Please do it at home’ poster points to gender gap in household chores performed by men
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Japanese men are being accused of displaying double standards when it comes to domestic chores after male football fans were seen cleaning up stadiums after World Cup matches.
Gender roles in Japanese society have come under renewed scrutiny after a social media post mocked football fans cleaning up stadium rubbish with a message that said "please do it at home", inspired by Tokyo Metro's famous etiquette posters.
The AI-generated spoof of a Metro poster showed a Japanese football fan in national team colours lounging on a sofa while a woman washed dishes. It was accompanied by a message urging men to tackle domestic and care work "at home first".
The post, which has been viewed more than a million times, juxtaposed the image with photographs of Japanese supporters cleaning the stadium after a 14 June match.
Japanese fans drew widespread praise for tidying the stands after the final whistle of their World Cup 2026 match against the Netherlands, which ended in a 2–2 draw.
The "please do it at home" poster also pointed to data showing that Japanese men spend relatively little time on unpaid work such as cleaning, shopping and childcare, while women shouldered most of the burden.
"Most of them don't do that at their own home," one commenter wrote under a video on the official World Cup 2026 X account praising the supporters' clean-up effort.
Some users also questioned the selective nature of the behaviour, noting that while fans often clean up after matches at home and abroad, large amounts of litter can still be seen on the streets after major weekend events.
Data compiled by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on the division of household labour found that Japanese men spend among the least amount of time on unpaid care work among developed economies.
Across the OECD's 34 member countries, the average Japanese man spent 6.3 hours a day in paid work and just 1.5 hours on household chores. Japanese women, meanwhile, shoulder a dual burden of paid work and unpaid care, devoting around three hours a day to employment and 3.3 hours to household tasks and childcare.
A more recent Japanese government study conducted in 2021 put men's unpaid work at just 51 minutes a day, compared with three hours and 24 minutes for women.
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