Summary Of Wages Against Housework

The manifesto ‘Wages against Housework’ has been written by Silvia Federici, a feminist Marxist as a part of her campaign commencing in 1975, directed at unifying women and bringing out their demands into the streets. It calls out to women regardless of their marital status, age, sexuality, nationality etc. to join the movement aimed at rallying against the prevailing social conditions under which they exist in the capitalistic society to make them “more favourable for women and consequently more favourable to the unity of class”. The women have been devalued for a long time, the price of their love coming at the expense of endless housework, a work which no one even recognizes as work. In the words of Federici, “there is hardly any bride who
The manifesto became quite popular as the movement grew and spread across US with different committees coming up such as Black Women for Wages for Housework and Wages Due Lesbians etc. Prescribing towards feminist ideology the manifesto displays how wages for “housework serves as a revolutionary perspective for initially the females, following the entire working class”. The manifesto clearly goes against the capitalistic intentions for making the work of women “burdensome and at the same time invisible.” According to Federici the role assigned to the women under a capitalistic society has been as servants to the working class where the only task of women is to make sure that the men are ready for work again the next day by being serviced “physically, emotionally and sexually” for free. To ask for wages would be to rebel against this very role followed by a break in “planned division of labour and social power within the working class, through which capital has been able to maintain its
The demands for wages are “addressed to the state since the state, “the representative of collective capital,” is “the real ‘Man’ profiting from this work.” The big Man, the State, and the little man, the husband, are locked in collusion against the wife.” It is the power that resides within the social contract of exploitation between the workers and the capitalists’ that gives the workers the ability to act as agents. The mere fact that you are being exploited means that your work is needed by the society and you are doing the work not because you like it but because there is no other way in which you can exist. By connecting the female attribute to housework, the capital made the housework wage less, thus creating a role akin to slavery, where you slave in the kitchen and bedroom all day but no one sees it as work following the assumption that it is your duty as a woman. Thus demanding of wages for housework, according to the manifesto would mean recognition of housework performed by women as actual work which would subsequently make women a part of social contract and thus give them the power to improve their working conditions, which as of now are treated as mere targets for ridicule. As put in by Federici, it would “expose the fact that housework is already money for capital” and all the burdens shouldered by women throughout the years were not