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Wages for Housework: A History of an International Feminist Movement, 1972-77
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 Featuring previously unpublished conversations with Silvia Federici and Mariarosa Dalla Costa, the book highlights the power and originality of the movement, detailing its theoretical and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 labor performed largely by women. Wages for Housework is a major contribution to the history of feminist and anticapitalist movements and a provocative intervention into contemporary conversations about the changing nature of work and the gendered labor market.
310 pages, Hardcover
Published September 19, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
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November 15, 2018http://rabble.ca/books/reviews/2018/1...
Review by Jessica Rose
In order to understand the context in which Wages for Housework -- a global feminist movement organized around the idea that domestic (or reproductive labour) was as "crucial for the survival of the capitalist system as more typically male 'productive’ labour'" -- was born, one must consider or recall what it was like to be a woman in the 1970s.
In the first chapter of her ambitious book Wages for Housework: A History of an International Feminist Movement, 1972–77, feminist writer and retired university professor Louise Toupin provides a glimpse into daily life for women in the early 1970s -- a time in which housework (also called domestic work or care work) was not considered to be real work, rather it was a "labour of love," or a biological duty imposed almost always upon women.
"In Quebec, for example, women could not serve on juries, and civil marriage and divorce had just been legalized, as had homosexuality 'between consenting adults,'" writes Toupin. She adds that access to abortions was only in the process of being liberalized, advertising of contraceptive methods was illegal, and "pay equity was an illusion." At the turn of the 1970s, "very few books dealt with the question of women as a political issue," and scholarly feminist studies were at their earliest stages.
Read the rest of the review here: http://rabble.ca/books/reviews/2018/1...
Review by Jessica Rose
In order to understand the context in which Wages for Housework -- a global feminist movement organized around the idea that domestic (or reproductive labour) was as "crucial for the survival of the capitalist system as more typically male 'productive’ labour'" -- was born, one must consider or recall what it was like to be a woman in the 1970s.
In the first chapter of her ambitious book Wages for Housework: A History of an International Feminist Movement, 1972–77, feminist writer and retired university professor Louise Toupin provides a glimpse into daily life for women in the early 1970s -- a time in which housework (also called domestic work or care work) was not considered to be real work, rather it was a "labour of love," or a biological duty imposed almost always upon women.
"In Quebec, for example, women could not serve on juries, and civil marriage and divorce had just been legalized, as had homosexuality 'between consenting adults,'" writes Toupin. She adds that access to abortions was only in the process of being liberalized, advertising of contraceptive methods was illegal, and "pay equity was an illusion." At the turn of the 1970s, "very few books dealt with the question of women as a political issue," and scholarly feminist studies were at their earliest stages.
Read the rest of the review here: http://rabble.ca/books/reviews/2018/1...
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews