Okay but run it all back – for years feminists have asked us to understand the home as a place of work, as a place where labour is enacted for free everyday. The Wages for Housework movement launched in 1972 united women across geographies and lived experience with the idea that housework is not ‘innately womens work’ nor an ‘act of love’, but labour which capitalism depends on to thrive and therefore deserves a wage. Women deserve to get paid for all the invisible work that the world needs to function: cleaning, cooking, having sex and raising the workforce.
This week, Zoe and Larissa are returning to this foundational feminist movement to ask: should we still be fighting for this? How far have we come in 50 years?
Resources:
Selin Çağatay (she/her/hers) (2023) “If women stop, the world stops”: forging transnational solidarities with the International Women’s Strike,
International Feminist Journal of Politics, How the Caribbean influenced domestic work and the ‘international parliament of labour’Amelia Horgan, 2021.
Creeping and Ameliorative Accounts of “Work”. Theory & Event “Wages for housework means wages against heterosexuality”: On the Archives of Black Women for Wages for Housework and Wages Due Lesbians Beth Capper, Arlen Austin
