A curious juxtaposition emerged this week. Japanese football fans, once again, were hailed as paragons of virtue for tidying up stadiums after matches at the World Cup. Meanwhile, across the Channel, British women took to social media to demand something far more mundane: equality in domestic labour. The disconnect is stark, and it tells us everything about who society rewards and who it forgets.
Let's start with the men in blue. Japanese supporters, famed for their post-match cleaning rituals, have become a global symbol of selflessness. Photographs of them picking up rubbish in Qatar spread like wildfire. 'Such respect,' we say. 'Such community spirit.' It is a lovely story, one that makes us feel good about humanity. But it is also a convenient distraction. Because while we applaud these fans for a few minutes of tidying, we ignore the millions of Japanese women who for decades have done the same unpaid labour at home, without applause, without cameras, without a single headline.
Japan's gender gap is no secret. The World Economic Forum ranks it 120th out of 156 countries. Women there do 4.5 times more unpaid domestic work than men. Yet when men perform a fraction of this work in a public arena, we treat it as a miracle. It is the same pattern we see in Britain, where a recent survey found that 70% of women feel domestic chores are unfairly distributed. The hashtag #DomesticEquality trended for a day, then vanished. No sponsors. No feel-good montages.
Let's follow the money, because that is always where the truth lies. Who profits from this narrative? The tourism boards. The FIFA sponsors. The brands that sell 'proud Japanese' merchandise. They want us to believe that cleaning is a cultural trait, not a gendered burden. They want us to admire the gesture without questioning the system that makes it exceptional. A source in Tokyo, who asked not to be named, told me: 'The government loves these stories. It distracts from the fact that women here are still expected to quit their jobs when they have children.'
And what of the British women? They are not asking for parades. They are asking for partners who load the dishwasher without being asked. They are asking for a society that does not treat their time as less valuable. This is not a call for pity. It is a call for equity. But equity does not make for good optics. It does not fit into a 30-second news package.
Here is the uncomfortable truth: we celebrate Japanese fans because their actions are visible, temporary, and non-threatening. We ignore British women because their struggle is invisible, perpetual, and demands structural change. Both are about cleaning. But one is a photo opportunity. The other is a revolution.
I have been in this business long enough to know that the stories we tell shape the world we live in. If we continue to valorise men for doing the dishes in public while women do them in private, we are not reporting news. We are reinforcing a lie. And I have no time for lies. Not when the evidence is scattered across every stadium seat and every kitchen sink in the country.
