* BOOK LAUNCH, February 2025
Wages for Housework – The Story of a Movement, an Idea, a Promise.
A fascinating new book by Emily Callaci about the history of the International Wages for Housework Campaign is being launched in the UK next week (US launch to follow).
Wages for Housework The Story of a Movement, an Idea, a Promisefeatures WFH founder Selma James (who turns 95 this year), co-ordinates the Global Women’s Strike (GWS) and is based at the Crossroads Women’s Centre in London, and Margaret Prescod, who co-founded Black Women for Wages for Housework (now best known as Women of Colour/GWS) and is based in California.
A must read in 2025 Observer: The Wages for Housework Campaign asked a provocative question. More than 50 years later, it is still relevant Guardian: I found myself nodding in agreement The Telegraph: Fascinating The Times: Thought-provoking Kirkus
“It describes the early history of a multiracial international grassroots movement rarely acknowledged by mainstream feminism.
We are the daughters of Eleanor Rathbone (UK) and Johnnie Tillmon (US) who fought for money for mothers. Women give birth to all the people in the world, are the primary carers in every society and grow most of the food. Our struggle for an income and to save life on Earth is more urgent than ever.”
Selma James
“Callaci’s book tells us what time it is. In the 80s and 90s pressure from our Global South-Global North delegation won UN recognition for women’s ‘unremunerated’ work – in the home, on the land and in the community.
The debate on paying for this vital work is louder every day. At the same time women and our children, especially if we are people of colour, are under attack. Our urging that societies ‘invest in caring not killing’ has never been more relevant.”
Margaret Prescod
Book launch events in the UK so far:
Mon 10 Feb, 9am: BBC Radio 4 – Start the Week, Wages for Housework – then and now
Mon 10 Feb, 5.30pm (Oxford) Blackwells
Emily Callaci ‘Wages for Housework’ with Lyndsey Jenkins Tickets, Mon, Feb 10, 2025 at 5:30 PM | Eventbrite
Wed 12 Feb, 7pm (London) London Review of Books
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/emily-callaci-helen-charman-wages-for-housework-tickets-1095110698579?_eboga=1835121551.1738596431
Thurs 13 Feb, 6-7.30pm (London School of Economics) LSE
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/book-launch-of-wages-for-housework-with-emily-callaci-tickets-1098956641899?aff=erelexpmlt
More information
Selma James and Margaret Prescod will be speaking on 10-11 April 2025at Our Right to Care international conference at the University of Pennsylvania and Crossroads Women’s Center in Philadelphia https://www.ourrighttocare.net/
The archives of IWFH 1972 – 2022 are available to view (by appointment) at the Crossroads Women’s Centre, 25 Wolsey Mews, London NW5 2DX (email to contact@crossroadswomen.net) AND at the Bishopsgate Institute 230 Bishopsgate, London EC2M 4QH
Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights Exhibition at the Wellcome Foundation includes a selection from the IWFH and the English Collective of Prostitutes’ archives – currently on until 27 April.
James’s two anthologies Sex, Race and Class: The Perspective of Winning and Our Time is Now and Prescod’s Black Women: Bringing it all back Home and other GWS publications are available from Crossroads Books.
You can see some of our films on https://www.youtube.com/@GlobalWomenStrike/videos, including the BBC Open Door All Work and No Pay and Selma James: People for Tomorrow “Our Time is coming now” as well as filming of many more recent events.