“A true masterpiece at the expense of women”
Silvia Federici and Wages for Housework
In November 1975 a group of women opened a storefront at 288B Eighth Street, off Fifth Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn, not far from the famous Park Slope Food Coop, which had been established a couple of years earlier. The members of the New York Wages for Housework Committee, a grassroots organization that was demanding payment from the government for domestic labor, were keen to establish a permanent base where they could hold meetings, distribute their posters and literature, and welcome members of the local community. To mark the opening, they strung up banners across Fifth Avenue and held a street party, with refreshments and music.1 One of the founding members of the Committee, Silvia Federici, a young feminist activist who was Italian by birth, delivered a speech in which she expressed distrust of politicians and journalists who celebrated motherhood and ignored the harsh economic realities that many mothers faced, relying on their spouses or welfare for money to raise their families. “It seems to us that if instead of praising our sacrifices they sent us a check at the end of the month, then we would have something to celebrate,” Federici declared. She also emphasized the essential role that housework and childrearing played in supporting and re-creating the workforce in the paid economy. “If we were not at home doing housework, none of their factories, mines, schools and hospitals, could run, none of their profits could flow,” she said. “With our work we make it possible for other people to go to work; we slave, so our husbands and children can slave. No wonder they say the family is the pillar of society.”2
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