A man in Argentina has been ordered to pay his ex-wife £142,000 in compensation after she gave up her career for 27 years of chores.
Now 70, the woman identified as ML, has an economics degree but left her job to become a housewife and raise their children during their 29-year marriage.
The couple wed in 1982, separated 27 years later in 2009 and divorced in 2011 by which time ML was in her sixties and considered 'too old' to find a job.
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With the amount reportedly unprecedented for divorce financial compensation, judge Victoria Famá ruled the woman faced financial hardship while the man, also 70, had a "good time".
She compared the work ML put in to the household and family with the work the husband did and determined a payout of 8million pesos.
"This verdict is very novel because it acknowledges that what we do in our homes is a job. Care tasks are a job because they involve time, effort and skill," Lucia Martelotte, deputy executive director of the Latin American Justice and Gender Team, told Argentinian news outlet Clarín.
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"But this goes unseen and women do not get a salary for that."
"The economic dependence of wives on their husbands is one of the central mechanisms through which women are subordinated to society," according to the judge's landmark ruling.
"In most families, women still mainly assume the burden of domestic chores and the care of children, even when they perform some external activity," it continued.
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The judge added that someone with fewer qualifications than ML, that didn't leave an existing job, wouldn't be entitled to the same compensation.
In 2016, the Office for National Statistics estimated the value of unpaid household work in Britain was worth a staggering £1.24 trillion, according to the Financial Times.
It found, on average, men do 16 hours of unpaid work a week compared with 26 hours for women.
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