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Wages Against Housework
They say it is love. We say it is unwaged work.
They call it frigidity. We call it absenteeism.
Every miscarriage is a work accident.
Homosexuality and heterosexuality are both working conditions…but homosexuality is workers’ control of production, not the end of work.
More smiles? More money. Nothing will be so powerful in destroying the healing virtues of a smile.
Neuroses, suicides, desexualization: occupational diseases of the housewife.
They call it frigidity. We call it absenteeism.
Every miscarriage is a work accident.
Homosexuality and heterosexuality are both working conditions…but homosexuality is workers’ control of production, not the end of work.
More smiles? More money. Nothing will be so powerful in destroying the healing virtues of a smile.
Neuroses, suicides, desexualization: occupational diseases of the housewife.
8 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1975
About the author
Silvia Federici
75 books1,340 followersSilvia Federici is an Italian and American scholar, teacher, and activist from the radical autonomist feminist Marxist and anarchist tradition. She is a professor emerita and Teaching Fellow at Hofstra University, where she was a social science professor. She worked as a teacher in Nigeria for many years, is also the co-founder of the Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa, and is a member of the Midnight Notes Collective.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
May 17, 2021
*The Good:
--This brief pamphlet is by a feminist sociologist who (along with Nancy Folbre) completely turned my understanding of critical economics on its head. I had started to explore heterodox economics (reading the likes of Ha-Joon Chang), but feminist perspectives (along with the environment) always seem to be shunned as externalities.
--Mainstream economics does a stunning job re-arranging common sense, so this pamphlet takes such market fundamentalism at its word and applies it to the externality of housework.
*The next steps...:
--"Reproductive labor" has been further expanded on by re-examining the social value of "work", seeing it not just as the creation of commodities (particularly the stereotypical male factory worker creating commodities, which increasingly faces automation by machines) but also seeing the human caring involved. This "care work" and its social value contradicts the market's exact quantification.
--This is introduced in Graeber's Bullshit Jobs: A Theory and further elaborated in Folbre's The Invisible Heart: Economics and Family Values. Varoufakis also has an accessible exploration of "experiential value" vs. "exchange value" in Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works - and How It Fails.
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September 22, 2022Questo è un testo degli anni Settanta di Silvia Federici sul lavoro domestico.
Caspita se è attuale, quante cose erano chiare già allora, quanto poco è cambiato da questo punto di vista.
Caspita se è attuale, quante cose erano chiare già allora, quanto poco è cambiato da questo punto di vista.
September 12, 2023
They say it is love. We say it is unwaged work.
They call it frigidity. We call it absenteeism.
Every miscarriage is a work accident.
Homosexuality and heterosexuality are both working conditions…but homosexuality is workers’ control of production, not the end of work.
This is very audacious work. It's...
... alright, maybe I should start with saying I didn't get this. I don't understand some of the statements in this. Federici is very... she wields her opinions in a very swift poetic way, she doesn't stop for you to catch up. She sometimes tells a punchline of a joke, before sharing the joke itself. It's very confusing sometimes. But in parts it's also really charming. I guess I'm strangely attracted to her spirit, even if I'm not even sure with how big part of her claims, I even agree.
The thing that is certain is that this piece aged. I wouldn't say poorly, but not that well either. As you can probably already tell from the quote. Saying that "homosexuality is workers control of production" seems kind of privileged to me. (If I understand this correctly, she is saying that homosexuals have control over their reproduction - which... you know, harder to get kids doesn't necessarily have to mean bigger control... but maybe she was trying to say something completely different, who knows...
In short, this is an essay about getting wages for housework. The arguments aren't really practical in nature... If I'll have time, I'll probably re-read this, because I don't have any proper notes from it...
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November 29, 2021It is one thing to set up a day care centre the way we want it, and demand that the State pay for it. It is quite another thing to deliver our children to the State and ask the State to control them, discipline them, teach them to honour the American flag not for five hours, but for fifteen or twenty-four hours. It is one thing to organise communally the way we want to eat (by ourselves, in groups, etc.) and then ask the State to pay for it, and it is the opposite thing to ask the State to organise our meals. In one case we regain some control over our lives, in the other we extend the State's control over us.
May 20, 2018
Fireeeeeee
Let's do this my women
Let's do this my women
November 6, 2022
Finally tracked this down and read it. Cited in two different books I read this week (both recently published). Brief, incisive. Still completely relevant 50 years later.
“We say: stop celebrating our exploitation, our supposed heroism. From now on we want money for each moment of it, so that we can refuse some of it and eventually all of it.”
“We say: stop celebrating our exploitation, our supposed heroism. From now on we want money for each moment of it, so that we can refuse some of it and eventually all of it.”
July 5, 2018
An interesting piece from 1975 where Silvia Federici, a feminist Marxist regarding the situation of women and housework in a Capitalist society. I'll be honest that I wasn't certain what to expect from this and actually found quite a range of thought from the writer.
For example:
"In the same way as god created Eve to give pleasure to Adam, so did capital create the housewife to service the male worker physically, emotionally and sexually-to raise his children, mend his socks, patch up his ego when it is crushed by the work and the social relations (which are relations of loneliness) that capital has reserved for him."
And then this:
"It is one thing to set up a day care centre the way we want it, and demand that the State pay for it. It is quite another thing to deliver our children to the State and ask the State to control them, discipline them, teach them to honour the American flag not for five hours, but for fifteen or twenty-four hours. It is one thing to organize communally the way we want to eat (by ourselves, in groups, etc.) and then as the State to pay for it, and it is the opposite thing to ask the State to organise our meals. In one case we regain some control over our lives, in the other we extend the State's control over us."
That's not entirely what I expected from a Marxist, but perhaps I'm not knowledgeable enough regarding the range of thought and theory.
In the end this I get:
"Wages for housework is only the beginning, but its message is clear: from now on they have to pay us because as females we do not guarantee anything any longer."
I think Silvia for 1975 and perhaps now is expressing a need to be respected and have substance and subsitence for a job that too long was considered as an expectation. One she characterizes as having the "occupational disease the housewife of neuroses, suicide, and desexualization."
A short 8 pages that I found interesting because I don't encounter this type of discussion, and certainly not from a Marxist perspective in my current social encounters and readings.
For example:
"In the same way as god created Eve to give pleasure to Adam, so did capital create the housewife to service the male worker physically, emotionally and sexually-to raise his children, mend his socks, patch up his ego when it is crushed by the work and the social relations (which are relations of loneliness) that capital has reserved for him."
And then this:
"It is one thing to set up a day care centre the way we want it, and demand that the State pay for it. It is quite another thing to deliver our children to the State and ask the State to control them, discipline them, teach them to honour the American flag not for five hours, but for fifteen or twenty-four hours. It is one thing to organize communally the way we want to eat (by ourselves, in groups, etc.) and then as the State to pay for it, and it is the opposite thing to ask the State to organise our meals. In one case we regain some control over our lives, in the other we extend the State's control over us."
That's not entirely what I expected from a Marxist, but perhaps I'm not knowledgeable enough regarding the range of thought and theory.
In the end this I get:
"Wages for housework is only the beginning, but its message is clear: from now on they have to pay us because as females we do not guarantee anything any longer."
I think Silvia for 1975 and perhaps now is expressing a need to be respected and have substance and subsitence for a job that too long was considered as an expectation. One she characterizes as having the "occupational disease the housewife of neuroses, suicide, and desexualization."
A short 8 pages that I found interesting because I don't encounter this type of discussion, and certainly not from a Marxist perspective in my current social encounters and readings.
June 25, 2023
Read in 2023. A must-read.
May 6, 2020
“To view wages for housework as a thing rather than a perspective is to detach the end result of our struggle from the struggle itself and to miss its significance in demystifying and subverting the role to which women have been confined in capitalist society.”
“When we struggle for wages we struggle unambiguously and directly against our social role.”
Amazing!!!!
“When we struggle for wages we struggle unambiguously and directly against our social role.”
Amazing!!!!
January 12, 2018
only rly took issue w the slavery analogy (as often happens)
July 20, 2023
Zdarma dostupné online, napr. text má University of Warvick, je to len osem strán.
Skvelé. Napísané v roku 1975, stále úderne aj dnes. O tom ako majú byť domáce práce (žien) platené, o tom ako kapitalizmus z tejto neplatenej práce nielen profituje, ale závisí od nej. Federici píše ako plat za domáce práce (a všetku ostatnú prácu žien, t.j. byť manželovi neplatená terapeutka, masérka, slúžka a prostitútka) umožňují slobodu a podkopanie kapitalizmu, ktorý drží na uzde ženskú a aj mužskú slobodu – ako tie peniaze sú použitím jeho vlastnej medicíny proti nemu.
Federici v krátkosti a trefne vystihla ako toto nastavenie kapitálu poškodzuje nielen ženy, ale aj mužov a celkovú vzťahovú dynamiku, jednoducho nás všetkých, celú spoločnosť, tým ako povoľuje a podporuje toxickú dynamiku medzi manželmi žena-muž:
Je to krátky text plný veľmi výstižných citátov, preto ich toľko vidieť v recenziách:
Odporúčam!
Skvelé. Napísané v roku 1975, stále úderne aj dnes. O tom ako majú byť domáce práce (žien) platené, o tom ako kapitalizmus z tejto neplatenej práce nielen profituje, ale závisí od nej. Federici píše ako plat za domáce práce (a všetku ostatnú prácu žien, t.j. byť manželovi neplatená terapeutka, masérka, slúžka a prostitútka) umožňují slobodu a podkopanie kapitalizmu, ktorý drží na uzde ženskú a aj mužskú slobodu – ako tie peniaze sú použitím jeho vlastnej medicíny proti nemu.
Wages for housework, then, is a revolutionary demand not because by itself it destroys capital, but because it forces capital to restructure social relations in terms more favourable to us and consequently more favourable to the unity of the class. In fact, to demand wages for housework does not mean to say that if we are paid we will continue to do it. It means precisely the’ opposite. To say that we want money for housework is the first step towards refusing to do it, because the demand for a wage makes our work visible, which is the most indispensable condition to begin to struggle against it, both in its immediate aspect as housework and its more insidious character as femininity.
Federici v krátkosti a trefne vystihla ako toto nastavenie kapitálu poškodzuje nielen ženy, ale aj mužov a celkovú vzťahovú dynamiku, jednoducho nás všetkých, celú spoločnosť, tým ako povoľuje a podporuje toxickú dynamiku medzi manželmi žena-muž:
It is not an accident that most men start thinking of getting married as soon as they get their first job. This is not only because now they can afford it, but because having somebody at home who takes care of you is the only condition not to go crazy after a day spent on an assembly line or at a desk.
Je to krátky text plný veľmi výstižných citátov, preto ich toľko vidieť v recenziách:
To say that we want wages for housework is to expose the fact that housework is already money for capital, that capital has made and makes money out of our cooking, smiling, fucking. At the same time, it shows that we have cooked, smiled, fucked throughout the years not because it was easier for us than for anybody else, but because we did not have any other choice.
Odporúčam!
February 24, 2021
'We will fail in the struggle for free laundromats unless we first struggle against the fact that we cannot love except at the price of endless work, which day after day cripples our bodies, our sexuality, our social relations, and unless we first escape the blackmail whereby our need to give and receive affection is turned against us as a work duty, for which we constantly feel resentful against our husbands, children and friends, and then guilty for that resentment.’
Federici summarises the central thesis of the second-wave feminist movement 'Wages for Housework': the capitalist mode of social organisation has actively suppressed the reproductive labour of women in the household; exploiting and mechanising them within a patriarchal system, utilising their bodies for the production and maintenance of the labour force. This 'reproductive' labour role (cooking, cleaning, sex, child-rearing, emotional support), in being unwaged, is made invisible, and instead, a capitalist conception of 'femininity' is created to chalk up all this 'work' to merely 'the doings of women', the role of the 'good, loving housewife'.
Capitalism therefore exploits women in, Federici argues, a far more insidious and covert manner than their male, factory-bound, wage-working counterparts. The capitalist notion of 'woman' as willingly subservient, servile, sycophantic in their subjugation, surrenders women of the right to even claim their status as worker. Their volition is stolen as well as the entire value of their labour.
In refusing this unwaged labour role, then, and taking to the streets in protest, women must reject the capitalist gender role devised for them. To ask for a wage is to make visible a woman's invisible labour, and once it is recognised as labour, she will have the right to reject it; in rejecting housewifery, she is then able to reconstruct her own conception of femininity - in so doing, reclaiming her right to love, fulfilling sexual relations, emotional and economic freedom.
Federici summarises the central thesis of the second-wave feminist movement 'Wages for Housework': the capitalist mode of social organisation has actively suppressed the reproductive labour of women in the household; exploiting and mechanising them within a patriarchal system, utilising their bodies for the production and maintenance of the labour force. This 'reproductive' labour role (cooking, cleaning, sex, child-rearing, emotional support), in being unwaged, is made invisible, and instead, a capitalist conception of 'femininity' is created to chalk up all this 'work' to merely 'the doings of women', the role of the 'good, loving housewife'.
Capitalism therefore exploits women in, Federici argues, a far more insidious and covert manner than their male, factory-bound, wage-working counterparts. The capitalist notion of 'woman' as willingly subservient, servile, sycophantic in their subjugation, surrenders women of the right to even claim their status as worker. Their volition is stolen as well as the entire value of their labour.
In refusing this unwaged labour role, then, and taking to the streets in protest, women must reject the capitalist gender role devised for them. To ask for a wage is to make visible a woman's invisible labour, and once it is recognised as labour, she will have the right to reject it; in rejecting housewifery, she is then able to reconstruct her own conception of femininity - in so doing, reclaiming her right to love, fulfilling sexual relations, emotional and economic freedom.
May 10, 2022
Excellent pamphlet highlighting wages for housework as a revolutionary perspective and the only revolutionary perspective from a feminist viewpoint and ultimately for the entire working class
Dismantles housework as 'a labour of love', stating the effect of the naturalisation of housework as a feminine attribute that leaves the woman dependent on her husband's salary
States the revolutionary case that wanting wages for housework means refusing that work as the expression of women's nature, and therefore to refuse precisely the female role that capital has invented for women
Wages for housework, then, is a revolutionary demand not because by itself it destroys capital, but because it attacks capital and forces it to restructure social relations in terms more favourable to women and consequently more favourable to the unity of the class. In fact, to demand wages for housework does not mean to say that if women are paid they will continue to do it. It means precisely the opposite, rather to advocate for money for housework is the first step towards refusing to do it, because the demand for a wage makes housework visible
The class unity of this work is underlined by highlighting the fear many women-particularly single women- have of the perspective of wages for housework because they are afraid of identifymg even for a second with the powerless housewife, and the call that all women should want and have to say that we are all housewives, we are all prostitutes and we are all gay, because until we recognise our slavery we cannot recognise our struggle against it, because as long as we think we are something better, something different than a housewife, we accept the logic of
the master, which is a logic of division, and for us the logic of slavery
Dismantles housework as 'a labour of love', stating the effect of the naturalisation of housework as a feminine attribute that leaves the woman dependent on her husband's salary
States the revolutionary case that wanting wages for housework means refusing that work as the expression of women's nature, and therefore to refuse precisely the female role that capital has invented for women
Wages for housework, then, is a revolutionary demand not because by itself it destroys capital, but because it attacks capital and forces it to restructure social relations in terms more favourable to women and consequently more favourable to the unity of the class. In fact, to demand wages for housework does not mean to say that if women are paid they will continue to do it. It means precisely the opposite, rather to advocate for money for housework is the first step towards refusing to do it, because the demand for a wage makes housework visible
The class unity of this work is underlined by highlighting the fear many women-particularly single women- have of the perspective of wages for housework because they are afraid of identifymg even for a second with the powerless housewife, and the call that all women should want and have to say that we are all housewives, we are all prostitutes and we are all gay, because until we recognise our slavery we cannot recognise our struggle against it, because as long as we think we are something better, something different than a housewife, we accept the logic of
the master, which is a logic of division, and for us the logic of slavery
February 26, 2023
It doesn't quite merit 5* but worth it because it's a quick read about Marxist-Feminist thought, and let's face it, you won't read those words together very often!
It was written in the 70s and so much has changed in terms of women's role in society, our attitudes about homosexuality have evolved, etc. And yet, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Looking in the rearview mirror it's so clear that feminism totally ignored (and still ignores) the ways in which men suffer under patriarchy, the fact that they too were expected to provide free labor to be manly/a good provider (mowing the lawn, repairing things around the house, being good with cars)... But, just as the different waves of feminism have tried to repair the error of not recognizing the impact of race and other aspects of intersectionality, I think we're becoming more and more aware of this.
The thing to love/hate about this essay is the fact that she was right, the dangers of being assisted by the state, the risk of focusing on "being able to do Anything a man can do" instead of breaking free from this assumption that women are not just objects for free sex, psychology, nurturing/caregivers. She warns us that neither denigrating women who are "carers" nor in careers doesn't help advance society our change the condition of women.
And remember ladies, it's your "choice" to smile and be beautiful for the camera!
It was written in the 70s and so much has changed in terms of women's role in society, our attitudes about homosexuality have evolved, etc. And yet, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Looking in the rearview mirror it's so clear that feminism totally ignored (and still ignores) the ways in which men suffer under patriarchy, the fact that they too were expected to provide free labor to be manly/a good provider (mowing the lawn, repairing things around the house, being good with cars)... But, just as the different waves of feminism have tried to repair the error of not recognizing the impact of race and other aspects of intersectionality, I think we're becoming more and more aware of this.
The thing to love/hate about this essay is the fact that she was right, the dangers of being assisted by the state, the risk of focusing on "being able to do Anything a man can do" instead of breaking free from this assumption that women are not just objects for free sex, psychology, nurturing/caregivers. She warns us that neither denigrating women who are "carers" nor in careers doesn't help advance society our change the condition of women.
And remember ladies, it's your "choice" to smile and be beautiful for the camera!
March 29, 2022
Great doc from Federici during the 70s on reproductive labor. The thesis that capital has mystified the violence and exploitation of unwaged reproductive labor and transformed it “into a natural attribute of our female physique and personality, an internal need, an aspiration, supposedly coming from the depth of our female character” is extremely compelling. Federici argues it follows that the struggle for waged housework demystifies this social relation, and forces capital to restructure class and gender relations such that conditions become more amenable towards working class unity. The slavery comparisons are off but this is a general problem historically with white feminism in the U.S. Haven’t started Caliban and the Witch yet so this is just prep
February 25, 2021
I had absolutely the best time reading this book. Some may think it is slightly outdated and it focuses on white feminism in Europe and the US, yet the concepts that it manifests are, as I believe, still very relevant to women nowadays. The language is great as well, very easy to read and accessible.
June 19, 2022
"Our faces have become distorted from so much smiling, our feelings have got lost from so much loving, our oversexualisation has left us completely desexualised."
"As is often said-when the needs of the waged labour market require her presence there-'A woman can do any job without losing her femininity,' which simply means that no matter what you do you are still a cunt."
"As is often said-when the needs of the waged labour market require her presence there-'A woman can do any job without losing her femininity,' which simply means that no matter what you do you are still a cunt."
July 31, 2022
The way she described "marriage, family, and love" is mindblowing. "Wages for housework" is a concept I really like because of my personal experience regarding my mum and her struggle against the patriarchal religious teachings of my dad. This idea of "wages for housework" is revolutionary from both the class struggle and the feminist point of view.
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January 6, 2023Breu assaig de la Sílvia Federici, una de les autores de moda dins del feminisme interseccional en l'època que anava a la uni (i potser encara ara?), en el que sosté la idea de que les tasques domèstiques que duen a terme les dones són part de la base de la seva opressió i haurien de ser remunerades.
El vaig llegir a tercer de carrera per l'assignatura Politics for Gender Equality.
El vaig llegir a tercer de carrera per l'assignatura Politics for Gender Equality.
October 15, 2019
On the front of my printout of this, I wrote 'INCREDIBLE.' I read this for a graduate seminar on Digital Labour--it's provocative and highly entertaining.
October 10, 2021
so fire
February 1, 2022
marxist feminism lets goooo
June 24, 2022
“to say we want wages for housework is to expose the fact that housework is already money for capital, that capital has made and makes money out of our cooking, smiling, fucking.”
December 9, 2022
beautiful
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January 11, 2023brief feminist pamphlet
has some economic fallacies but incredibly strong message.
has some economic fallacies but incredibly strong message.
August 10, 2023
“We want to call work what is work so that eventually we might rediscover what is love…”
December 30, 2020
Required reading for all. It's sad how relevant this remains today, 45 years later. I support wages for housework. I want liberation for the housewife.
February 26, 2023
youth (productivity) and attractiveness (female productivity)
February 3, 2014
She just covers so much. This book has helped me understand how domestic work is enmeshed in capitalism. I will never be able to hear the phrase "flexible labor market" without thinking of the millions of women living precariously as house-cleaners, nannies and elder care workers all over the world.
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August 1, 2013A very different take on housework than I've met in modern feminist movements. Very inspiring!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews