Feminist Studies· 2025Q2· Book chapter
Wages Against Housework
- 560citations
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- 2025year
Short summary
This essay argues that making reproductive labor visible and compensated under capitalism is essential for women's status as workers and for broader worker struggles.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Key points
- Housework's invisibility under capitalism denies women the status of workers.
- Housework is conflated with femininity and performed under the guise of love.
- Women's unpaid domestic labor is essential for the functioning of capital.
- Recognizing women's unpaid labor is central to broader worker struggles.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
In 1974, Silvia Federici and Nicole Cox founded the first US chapter of Wages for Housework in New York. A year later, Federici published this essay, which remains one of the best known and widest-reaching texts to argue for the benefit of making visible reproductive labor within capitalism. Importantly, for Federici, housework was different from other kinds of production under capitalism. Namely, housework’s invisibility denies women the status of workers, and consolidates housework and femininity such that they become indistinct. This is all done under the guise of love and familial bonds. Federici pulls back the curtain to show a culture of servitude, arguing that women’s labor in the home is essential to the functioning of capital. Federici’s essay and her larger body of scholarly and activist work, argue for an understanding of women’s unpaid labor as central to larger worker struggles.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Feminist Studies, 2025 · DOI ↗
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Field: Public Administration
Public AdministrationSocial Sciences