*Shortlisted for the Cundill History Prize* What would women do with their lives if they had
more time? The riveting untold story of a revolutionary campaign to change the way work is
valued 'The women of the world are serving notice. We want wages for every dirty toilet
every indecent assault every painful childbirth every cup of coffee and every smile. And if
we don't get what we want we will simply refuse to work any longer!' Across the globe in the
1970s a network of feminists distilled their struggles into a single demand: Wages for
Housework! Today it remains a provocative idea and an unfulfilled promise. Here historian
Emily Callaci tells the story of this campaign by exploring the lives and ideas of its key
creators tracing their wildly creative political vision over the past five decades: from the
early 1970s when Selma James a working-class political organizer and Mariarosa Dalla Costa
a scholar-activist started laying the foundations of Wages for Housework in London and Italy
through philosopher Silvia Federici reframing the campaign in the context of New York City's
fiscal crisis to Wilmette Brown lesbian poet and anti-war activist and Margaret Prescod
community organizer who brought the insights of Black feminism to the movement. Drawing on
new archival research and extensive interviews Callaci takes us deep inside the heart of the
movement as it reached across Europe America Africa and the Caribbean. For these women the
wage was more than a demand for money: it was a starting point for remaking the world as we
know it imagining potential futures under capitalism - and beyond. Then as now Wages for
Housework poses profound questions. What would it be like to live in a society that prioritizes
care rather than production? How would this change our relationship with the natural world? And
what would women do with their lives if they had more time?
