The revelatory story of a radical campaign to change the way we value work

“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, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

Shortlisted for the 2025 Cundill History Prize • A Guardian Best Book of the Year

Women do more than three-quarters of all the world’s unpaid care work, contributing over $9 trillion to the global economy each year. Dishes don’t clean themselves; dinner is not magically made; children must be cared for. But why is this work not compensated?
 
Wages for Housework is the fascinating international story of Selma James, Silvia Federici, Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Wilmette Brown, and Margaret Prescod, whose movement demanded wages as a starting point for remaking the world as we know it. Drawing on their campaign’s roots in 1970s America, Italy, and the UK, with original archival research and interviews, historian Emily Callaci explores the revolutionary potential of paying women for their work in the home, and how Wages for Housework reimagined potential futures under capitalism—and beyond—in ways that continue to be relevant today. 
 
Wages for Housework is an essential feminist history of an overlooked movement for economic and social justice.

Emily Callaci is an associate professor of history at University of Wisconsin–Madison and an affiliate of the Program of Gender and Women’s Studies. She is the author of Street Archives and City Life. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin.