Emily Callaci

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

As much a group biography as it is a study of a political perspective... the book triumphs in upholding these women's work

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Emily Callaci’s rich, perceptive account of the immensely influential, intensely charismatic, frequently invoked, yet often misunderstood Wages for Housework movement is the one I’ve been waiting for—one that does justice to the complexity of its most famous figures, demands, and campaigns while also bringing attention to overlooked thinkers and ideas, like Wilmette Brown’s vision of environmental repair.  Callaci’s meticulous history, honest assessment, and sharp analysis are beautifully and aptly paired with eloquent reflections on her own experiences of balancing care with other forms of work. I learned so much from this book and loved reading every page

A wonderful book. Emily Callaci beautifully captures the excitement and energy of the Wages for Housework campaign. A global history of the movement told through some of its principle figures, Wages for Housework takes us from the villages of Italy to the squats of Camden and New York City to UN Conferences in Nairobi and Beijing. This book thrums with the voices of women: organizers, activists, housewives, students, mothers, writers, and caregivers of all kinds. If you are a woman who has ever been conscripted into unpaid work in the name of love, you will see yourself in this book

The Story of a Movement, an Idea, a Promise

'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!' 
 
Across the globe in the 1970s, a network of feminists distilled their struggles into a single demand: Wages for Housework! Today, it remains a provocative idea, and an unfulfilled promise. 
 
Here historian Emily Callaci tells the story of this campaign by exploring the lives and ideas of its key creators, tracing their wildly creative political vision over the past five decades: from the early 1970s, when Selma James, a working-class political organizer, and Mariarosa Dalla Costa, a scholar-activist, started laying the foundations of Wages for Housework in London and Italy; through philosopher Silvia Federici reframing the campaign in the context of New York City’s fiscal crisis; to Wilmette Brown, lesbian poet and anti-war activist, and Margaret Prescod, community organizer, who brought the insights of Black feminism to the movement. 
 
Drawing on new archival research and extensive interviews, Callaci takes us deep inside the heart of the movement as it reached across Europe, America, Africa and the Caribbean. For these women, the wage was more than a demand for money: it was a starting point for remaking the world as we know it, imagining potential futures under capitalism – and beyond. Then as now, Wages for Housework poses profound questions. What would it be like to live in a society that prioritizes care rather than production? How would this change our relationship with the natural world? And what would women do with their lives if they had more time?

Emily Callaci

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter