Housework is unbelievably boring. Time can always be better spent reading a book, staring out of the window, lying on the floor... Literally anything. But, does it count as work? Should it be paid for? In the 1970s, a group of women became fed up with a life of enforced domesticity, and decided that at the very least, if they must do it, they should be paid for it. “We want wages for every dirty toilet, every indecent assault, every painful childbirth, every cup of coffee and every smile”. A new book by historian Emily Callaci called Wages for Housework, tells the story of the group of feminists who created and drove this eponymous movement.
The women who started the Wages for Housework (WFH 1.0) campaign — who were small in number; never more than a few dozen members — had serious influence, even though many fellow feminists at the time dismissed them as cranks. This group believed that running the home, without financial gain, was exploitation of women. That there were two men who benefited from every woman stuck working for free in the home: their husband, the worker — and his employer. “Housework is the most essential part of the capitalist system”, Callaci explains. “When women are financially dependent on male breadwinners, the bosses have leverage against those men.” The campaign was of course not quite as simple as just being paid for housework.
