The Wages for Housework Campaign
Wages for Housework was first formulated by Selma James in 1972. For over 50 years we have been campaigning for recognition and payment for all caring work. This reproductive work is unwaged and overwhelmingly carried out by women, starting with mothers. When done outside the home for pay, it is generally low waged.
Our multiracial grassroots network is international and based in a number of countries. In the 1980s and 90s we mobilised for the UN Decade for Women to agree to count women’s unremunerated work – in the home, on the land and in the community – in national accounts. We said ‘women count- count women’s work’.We won.
The Global Women’s Strike
To mark the new millennium, women in Ireland asked us to support a women’s strike so we called for a “global women's strike” for 8 March 2000. Over 60 countries took part. The name stuck and Wages for Housework became known as the Global Women’s Strike. Our perspective: invest in caring, not killing.
A Care Income for people and planet
In 2022, we launched the Care Income Now! campaign: mothers and other carers, of every gender, should be entitled to an income for their caring work for people, the land, the environment – all life.
How we organise – autonomy is the way to unity
We work to end the power relations within our movements, of sex, race, class, income, language, nation, immigration status, city and countryside, age, dis/ability, occupation, gender identity, Global North and South …
A number of organisations are part of Wages for Housework/Global Women’s Strike. Each has its own demands and priorities. Each one is autonomous while at the same time working together with and being accountable to all the others. They are:Black Women for Wages for Housework, English Collective of Prostitutes, International Women Count Network, Queer Strike, Single Mothers Self Defence, US PROStitutes Collective (US PROS), WinVisible (women with visible & invisible disabilities), Women of Colour in the Global Womens Strike. . We also work with Payday, a network of men who share our aims.