Wages for Housework

The Story of a Movement, an Idea, a Promise

By: Emily Callaci

Length: Not Yet Known

Publisher's summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

'The women of the world are serving notice! We want wages for every dirty toilet, every indecent assault, every painful childbirth, every cup of coffee and every smile. And if we don’t get what we want, we will simply refuse to work any longer!'

Launched in the early 1970s in the United States, Italy and the UK, Wages for Housework was a political movement making the case that women who did all the care work at home deserved to be paid. Like many revolutionary ideas, it remained an unfulfilled promise. It is a feminist path not taken.

Here historian Emily Callaci tells the enthralling story of this international campaign and its intellectual roots by exploring the lives of its key figures. We follow Selma James and Mariarosa Dalla Costa as they lay the foundations of the movement, then explore how Silvia Federici reframed the campaign in the context of 1970s New York, while Wilmette Brown and Margaret Prescod brought the insights of Black feminism, expanding the movement even further with an anti-imperialist perspective.

Uncovering fascinating stories and debates thanks to new archives and interviews, Callaci takes us deep inside the heart of the campaign, reaching across Europe, America and Africa. She shows how these women imagined potential futures under capitalism — and beyond — as the questions they raised continue to resonate today. What would it be like to live in a society that rewarded caring for people as much as consumption? How would we relate to the natural world if, rather than emphasizing productivity and growth, we valued maintenance and repair? And what would the women of the world do with their lives if they had more time?

©2025 Emily Callaci (P)2025 Penguin Audio