Why is laundry only a mother's job?

A detergent brand is shedding light on an issue that has plagued families for as long as we can remember: rigid gender roles. Now, this short video makes you wonder why women have become inherently associated with house chores.

The thought-provoking TVC shows a father's heartwarming apology to his super woman daughter, who not only works but also takes care of her family and a million other things around the house, things that husbands almost never offer to do.

"I'm so proud and I'm so sorry. Sorry that you have to do everything alone, that I didn't point out to you when you would play house as a young girl that it wasn't only your job to do errands but also your husband's butI didn't know how to apologize since I never helped out your mother either. You learnt what you saw and for that, I am sorry."

Being a wife and a mom is no job but it's work, a lot of work. And if women started getting paid for everything they do around the household, they'd be making some serious bank.

And why would the men help? Most have grown up watching their fathers sit back and watch television while their mothers have been slaving away in the kitchen, some even after a long day at work, without complaining.

In this clip the dad does his little part when he goes home from his daughter's house: he unpacks and goes to do his own laundry, much to his wife's confusion. The look of sheer shock on her face, how she obviously thought it was the most absurd thing ever should speak for itself.

Or maybe she was just freaking out that he wouldn't separate the colours from whites. Probably not though.

The gender roles we've perpetuated have become the norm and haven't evolved with the times.That needs to be changed in real life as well translated onto television screens.

While the execution would have been been better had the father got up to help his daughter, thus setting an example for the son-in-law, the bigger picture is what we should focus on. What they did get right was there was no finger-pointing and the approach was nuanced.

We know the tea trolley-pushing woman is an outdated character; just the fact that this ad shows a woman coming home from work is a step in the right direction, like in the Tapal ad in which Fawad Khan made his overworked wife a hot cup of tea.

Of course we're seing more career-driven women, like Saba Qamar's role in Digest Writer, as well as Sonya Jehan's in Ho Mann Jahaan. However, it's limited and going to take more positive representation in the media to really drive the point home.