What the Fairness Score actually means

The dial on your home screen is a single number from 0 to 100 describing how evenly the household’s work is falling. It is the one number Equal House exists to produce, so it is worth understanding what it is and is not.

It counts effort, not jobs

Ten minutes putting the bins out and ninety minutes of batch cooking are not the same thing, and a score that counted them equally would be easy to game and useless to trust. Every task carries a difficulty, and the engine weighs by that rather than by how many rows each person ticked.

It is measured against capacity, not against each other

A straight 50/50 split is the wrong target for most households. Someone working six days a week, on a night shift, or off sick is not failing by doing less. Each adult has a capacity share, and the score compares what they did against what it is reasonable for them to do.

If you set up work schedules, the engine goes further and expects less of someone during the hours they are actually at work.

What it does not know

It only knows what is written down. This is the single most common reason a score looks wrong: the person who feels the load is carrying jobs nobody has ever added — remembering the dentist, noticing the shoes are too small, keeping the birthday list. Until those exist as tasks, they are invisible to the maths as well as to the household.

If the score disagrees with how it feels, that gap is usually the answer, not an error.

Changing the window

The score can be read over a day, week, month or year. A week is the fairest default: a day is noise, and a year hides a bad month. Tap the period toggle above the dial.

What to do about a lopsided score

• Fairer week ahead proposes a redistribution you can accept or ignore
• Time breakdown shows where the hours are actually going
• Check nobody’s capacity share is set wrongly — an adult accidentally left at a low share will look permanently virtuous