I guess if you follow the Vatican’s no-contraception policy, you REALLY need the washing machine to keep up with the mountain of clothes the mountain of children you’ll have and to give you more free time to create more babies.

To mark International Women’s Day, L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s official newspaper, has graciously commented on women’s lib for us. Its editorial decrees that the washing machine has contributed more to the emancipation of western women than the pill, or the legalisation of abortion, or being able to work outside the home. But it would, wouldn’t it? Abortion and pills aren’t allowed over there. Washing machines are.

What a bizarre world L’Osservatore describes, with its “image of the superwoman, smiling, made-up and radiant among the appliances of her house”. It’s more than half a century ago, back in 1953, that the automatic washing machine took off and women apparently went mad in the suburbs, turning to drink and sex. Only I didn’t notice my mother and her chums being radiant and smiling. They may have got rid of their heavy mangles and twin-tubs, but it was still a fairly bleak life, stuck at home fiddling with these new machines. And it’s still a bore today; we’re still trying our best to perk up doing the housework (not so long ago, the Daily Mail discovered a new social phenomenon: “Countless British women … doing housework in the nude …”)

“Put in the powder, close the lid and relax,” reads L’Osservatore’s headline – but it isn’t that simple, Vatican, honestly it isn’t. Have you ever tried it? I thought everyone knew that the more time these new appliances saved us, the more tasks we found to fill that time.