Every mother is a working mother.

May 14, 2023 7:01 PM

“We are not sorry that we are carers. But we are very tired of being poor carers.” Anti-racist advocate for women's rights Selma James and others launched the Wages for Housework campaign over 50 years ago, in 1972. Online archives of Wages for Housework at Global Womens Strike. A "militant mama" who felt pushed out of political organizing on discovering James' work. Title taken from this 1977 issue of Safire, the inaugural newsletter of the US-based Black Women for Wages for Housework (founded in 1976).

Previously/relatedly on MeFi: feminist economics, revolutionary feminism reader.

posted by spamandkimchi (5 comments total)

Maybe payment for raising children is a form of modified UBI that can be implemented. It would certainly have maximum good for minimum cost as far as I can see.
posted by hippybear at 7:04 PM on May 14, 2023 [5 favorites]

excelsior.
posted by eustatic at 8:24 PM on May 14, 2023

Of related interest: Sophie Lewis' critical review of Essential Labour: Mothering as Social Change by Angela Garbes in the London Review of Books, 4th May edition here. [Partial paywall: limited number of free-to-read articles per month].
posted by Joeruckus at 1:18 AM on May 15, 2023

Related: The Invisible Work of Mothers in Music
posted by chavenet at 3:45 AM on May 15, 2023

I saw a description a while back saying that women's unpaid domestic labor is the dark matter of the economy.
posted by rmd1023 at 5:04 AM on May 16, 2023 [7 favorites]