Wages for Housework

Her vivid portraits revive a feminism both more radical and more mischievous than some contemporary forms – Best books of 2025 * Guardian *
Fascinating… the 50-year-old debate about the economic status of housework is strangely relevant in a post-Covid world where the boundary between work and home has become so blurred – Harry Wallop * The Times *
Meticulously researched… What makes it so fascinating is that much of what these women were fighting for and against remains true today… There were many times that I found myself nodding in agreement – Lucy Denyer * The Telegraph *
As much a group biography as it is a study of a political perspective… the book triumphs in upholding these women’s work – Alice Vincent * New Statesman *
Emily Callaci has given us a beautifully clear history of the light that feminist Marxists shone on home sweet home, exposing it as a site of radical exploitation. Through a deft analysis of key figures and ideas, the book shows the extraordinary reach of Wages for Housework as a devastating critique of global, racial capitalism, and containing within itself a way of reclaiming the earth – Hannah Dawson
Vivid and vital… as much a political provocation as it is a celebration. Wages for Housework is as urgently relevant to working women in the UK as it was in the 1970s. – Janey Starling * UNISON Magazine *
A subtle portrait of the Wages for Housework movement and its central figures. From Britain and the United States to Italy, Barbados and Zambia, Callaci traces the development of this complex political struggle that began from the important truth that housework is work. This is a timely history that should be read by anyone interested in how we might transform our everyday lives–both by those who live and breathe these feminist battles, and by those who have yet to join them – Katrina Forrester
This powerful book reminds us of the radical campaign to end capitalism by demanding recognition of the extraordinary extent it relies on unpaid work—of rearing children, caring for the sick, disabled, and for elders, of maintaining communities and tending the earth. Callaci’s account of this everyday socialism extends from Black Power to Italian feminism, from opposing structural adjustment programs to inspiring those demanding a Green New Deal. I can’t wait to teach this book and give a copy to everyone I know – Laura Briggs
Emily Callaci shows why Wages for Housework matters through the women who provoked a movement and her own attempt to juggle care work with academic labor. This stunning intellectual portraiture of Selma James, Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Silvia Federici, Wilmette Brown, and Margaret Prescod connects the personal with the political, illuminating the ways that racial capitalism has depended on reproductive labor—and how tending to people and the earth offers a perspective in which to fight back. Theory has never been more readable – Eileen Boris
Wages for Housework is arguably the most misunderstood, maligned, and mythologized movement in the annals of radical feminist history. Its impact was, and still is, bigger than its numbers, and its liberatory possibilities greater than we’ve realized. Emily Callaci sweeps away decades of misrepresentation and wrestles with the archives, memories, and perspectives of its brilliant founders, producing a groundbreaking account of a movement that brought the war on gendered racial capitalism home. Illuminating, honest, nuanced, Wages for Housework is a must-read for anyone seeking to make a just and sustainable world for all – Robin D. G. Kelley

Emily Callaci is a historian and writer, currently Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Wages for Housework is her first trade book.

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