Imagine if every weekend was a long weekend, and every week a four-day week.

In Sweden, a 30-hour week has been shown to benefit satisfaction and health, and lead to a more equal share of housework and childcare between genders. Yet another Swedish experiment found that a decrease in work time by 1 per cent corresponds to an 0.8 per cent reduction in household greenhouse gas emissions.

Imagine if you only had to go through this four days a week... Credit:John Phillips

Australian academics have recently called for our current 38-hour cap to be strengthened in order to improve gender equality. Perhaps we should go further: a four-day work week - for both men and women.

In her book The Wife Drought, Fairfax Media columnist Annabel Crabb suggested we've been looking at workplace equality all wrong. It's not just about getting women into work, keeping them there, and paying them well. It's about getting men to go home.