According to our latest research, it's now women that are more likely than men to carry out the painting / decorating jobs around the home.

In fact, since the year 2000, there's been a 7% increase in women's regular participation in all DIY tasks, whereas the men's level of participation has remained more-or-less constant.

And although women still only account for a fifth of total time spent on DIY in the UK, their 600 million woman-hours are making a major contribution in the upkeep of the nation's homes each year, as well as helping to shape the home improvement market.

Gone are the days when tradesmen, dads, husbands or partners were depended upon to tend to all the DIY around the home. With more and more women than ever before either living on their own or initiating the decorating, getting to grips with DIY tasks has been a natural step – so the sharing of home improvement tasks in households has truly shifted.

Everybody's doing it

There is no longer 'women's work' and 'men's work' and we're now seeing both sexes sharing the whole range of domestic tasks - with DIY and decorating being no exception. And whilst women are increasingly becoming more involved in DIY, it is clear from our research that many prefer the type of jobs that involve more aesthetic and creative work, such as painting, tiling and other decorating tasks - 53% of women compared to 49% of men said that they carried out painting and/or decorating in their home in the last year. Maintenance jobs such as unblocking drains are mainly still left to the men!

With this in mind, we looked at what jobs women are most likely to undertake within the decorating process. Most women have a very clear idea of how they want their home to look when they have finished decorating, so that means no cutting corners and putting in the proper preparation to ensure an enviable finish. All that's needed is a bit of know-how, the right tools and products for the job - and some spare time.

But with today's hectic schedules, the latter is usually the hardest to come by. So we set about creating a range of fillers that are quick and easy to use – helping to get the job done in no time. We are sure that, using these products, you will find doing the filling jobs much lighter work. Try them out for yourselves.

There's a whole range of products designed by manufacturers, like us at Polycell, that take the worry and hassle out of DIY and pre-decoration tasks; not only for women but for anyone that is new - or a bit rusty - at tackling DIY tasks.