Wages for Housework
A History of an International Feminist Movement, 1972–77
Description
In this first-ever international history of the influential feminist movement Wages for Housework, Louise Toupin draws on extensive archival research and interviews with the movement’s founders and activists from Italy, England, Germany, Switzerland, the United States, and Canada. Featuring previously unpublished conversations with Silvia Federici and Mariarosa Dalla Costa, the book highlights the power and originality of the movement, detailing its theoretical and organizational innovations around the unrecognized forms of labour performed largely by women. Wages for Housework is a major contribution to the history of feminist and anti-capitalist movements and a provocative intervention into contemporary conversations about the changing nature of work and the gendered labour market.
Reviews
Drawing on feminism, Marxism, and capitalism, Wages for Housework is rooted in academia, but Toupin’s crisp and confident writing make the book accessible to all readers with an interest in gender studies and labour history in Canada and beyond. A huge undertaking and achievement, Wages for Housework is much-needed documentation of a movement that is largely unknown.
- Jessica Rose