Silvia Federici’s 1975 pamphlet titled “Le salaire contre le travail ménager” is a foundational piece of Marxist feminist political thought. Federici’s thesis explains that the primary aim for wages for housework is not the increase of money that women receive for housework, but that the campaign merely acts as a conduit that reveals how the existing capitalist social relations use housework and social reproduction to oppress and exploit the labour of women. Federici begins her supporting arguments by outlining the socioeconomic realities that force women into housework or a life of perpetual servitude. The forces of capitalism create the female houseworker to ensure that the emotional, sexual and physical needs of the worker are taken care of when he feels exploited and tired from work. Federici argues that this housework is not innate to women. The belief, both external and internal, that women are naturally wives, caregivers and housekeepers first stems from the fact that for the first 20 years of women’s lives they are conditioned to think that this is a reality and are left with the feeling that caregiving is an essential part of the women’s experience. But what often occurs is that women feel burnt out and exhausted by the physical and mental toll of the work they do once the mystification of love and family wear off to a brutal reality of servitude. Federici therefore sees capital as the source of a “servante-servi” relationship between men and women where women are expected to physically, sexually and emotionally serve men who are being exploited at work to ensure that the labouring men are ready to go back to work the next day with their problems solved (Federici, 1975, p. 5).
Furthermore, Federici highlights how the demand for wages for housework is a truly revolutionary tactic that challenges the social role that has been imposed on women and the structural exploitation that exists to create these imposed roles. For Federici, wages for housework is not an end, but a means for women’s liberation. Winning a salary for housework is a strategic goal, one that, on one hand allows women to make money for labour that is currently unpaid, and on the other tears down the facade that housework is inherent to women and thus allows feminists to strike more poignantly by openly identifying capitalism’s need for the reproduction of the worker as the root cause of the oppression of women. But Federici is not naive in this strategy by thinking that by just doing away with capitalism, women will be liberated. She acutely points out how working-class men reinforce women’s role as natural houseworkers and are the most violent towards women because they take out their frustrations from work when they get home (Federici, 1975, p. 5). However, once wages are won for housework, Federici argues that men will begin to see housework and the sexual, emotional and physical work done by women as real work, inevitably changing their attitudes towards women once they understand men’s role in perpetuating this exploitation. She argues that wages for housework will even lead to men’s own liberation once women begin to illustrate how capital pins working-class men and women against each other in the pursuit of profit (Federici, 1975, p. 11).
Though for Federici, this revolutionary potential of wages for housework must not be euthanized by more moderate feminist tendencies that see the aims of the movement in the expansion of women in the workplace. These “femmes de carrière”, while seeking an escape from the labour of housework, only double their exploitation which exists at home and in the workplace. These feminists, by framing their work as an escape from being seen as lesser in society as a houseworker, adopt the logic of the master which seeks to divide women into those who have escaped housework and consider themselves better because of it and those who have not (Federici, 1975, p. 12). The theory behind wages for housework exists to unite feminists in understanding how exploitation continues even beyond housework because it is the capitalist system and its institutions themselves behind the exploitation, driving the need to dismantle these systems rather than adjusting to them.
This pamphlet is an important contribution to feminist political thought. At the time of its writing in 1975, the Second Wave of Feminism was in full swing which presented a hegemonic feminism that focused its aims on the political and legal rights of mostly upper- and middle-class white women while falling short on systemic critiques that shift the perspective towards women of various colours, sexualities and classes (Thompson, 2002, p. 337). Wages for housework exists as a critique of not only the capitalist forces that oppress all women, but also as a critique of existing feminist political thought. Federici addresses career women and explains how regardless of the power granted by their societal positions, women will always be seen as being able to do more labour than solely the amount expected such as personal favours and emotional support for their bosses and colleagues. By examining how the existing social relations, driven by capital’s need to produce more labourers and to care for the labourer when he is home from work, oppress women even when they have escaped being a wife or mother, Federici’s writings prove to be invaluable to alternative feminist perspectives that take into account how class, race, and other socioeconomic identifiers intersect with the oppression of women. This pamphlet thus exists to present the Wages for Housework Campaign as the best way forward for the feminist movement. The pamphlet is written in a way that attempts not only to illuminate the experiences of women under capitalism and their unseen exploitation, but also as a treatise that argues against other kinds of feminist thought which are not seen as revolutionary enough to properly address the exploitation of women (Federici, 1975, p. 11). It is a pamphlet written from the perspective of a revolutionary Marxist feminist to highlight the intersection of class and gender and thus orient the broader feminist movement in a revolutionary direction that seeks not to swap women out for men in society as it currently exists, but to understand and replace current institutions which are shown to be inherently oppressive towards women.
Federici presents a well formulated and logical treatise on not only the Wages for Housework Campaign, but also on revolutionary Marxist feminist political thought. The quote, “un salaire rendre notre travail visible” (Federici, 1975, p. 7) is critical to understanding how the activism of Wages for Housework and Marxist feminist political thought exist in a symbiotic relationship with each other. The above quote serves firstly as a rallying call for the Wages for Housework Campaign and for the broader feminist movement. Wages for women’s housework will not only compensate women for the labour they do to uphold the roots of society at the level of social reproduction, but it is also a strategic win for the broader movement. With the recognition of housework as labour rather than innate to womanhood, feminists would gain a strong foothold in the broader labour movement, giving them a voice to speak on the inherent contradictions and exploitation which exist in capitalism. Federici’s pamphlet is an extension of Marx’s notion that the aim of philosophy and theory is not to merely interpret the world, but to use that knowledge in order to change it for the better (Marx, 1845/1978, p. 145). The phrase, “un salaire rendre notre travail visible” adheres to this need for praxis, using a combination of feminist and Marxist theory to fight for better conditions for women, and by extension the rest of humanity.
Federici, S. (1975) Salaire contre le travail ménager. In Le foyer de l’insurrection. Recueil de textes traduits et inédits sur le travail ménager, ed. Collectif L’Insoumise, 1977.
Thompson, B. (2002). Multiracial Feminism : Recasting the Chronology of Second Wave Feminism. Feminist Studies, 28(2), 337-360. https://doi.org/10.2307/3178747.
Marx, K. (1978). Theses on Feuerbach. In R. C. Tucker (Ed.), The Marx-Engels Reader (pp. 143-145). W. W. Norton & Company. (Original work published 1845).