Selma James is an antisexist, antiracist campaigner and has fought for justice for over 50 years. Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1930 she became the wife of the internationally renowned West Indian Historian and political philsopher C.L.R James. In Britain during the 1960s, she became a leading activist in the movements for the rights of immigrants and people of colour.
Selma is the author or several seminal books among them A Women's Place; Sex Race and Class; The Perspective of Winning; Wageless of the world and Women, the Unions and Work. She has lectured and led workshops all over the World and is the founder of the Wages for Housework and Care Income Now campaign.
Selma's most recent book Our Time Is Now: Sex, Race and Class and Caring for People and Planet is steeped in the tradition of Marx. She draws on half a century of organizing across sectors, struggles and national boundaries with others in the Wages for Housework Campaign and the Global Women’s Strike, an autonomous network of women, men, and other genders that agree with their perspective. There is one continuum between the care and protection of people and of the planet: both must be a priority, beginning with a care income for everyone doing this vital work. This book makes the powerful argument that the climate justice movement can draw on all the movements’ people have formed to refuse their particular exploitation, to destroy the capitalist hierarchy that is destroying the world. Our time is now.
Antiracism, anti-discrimination and the justice work we do for ourselves and with others are at the heart of Selma James' campaigning.
Latest News from Selma James
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After more than 50 years of campaigning,wages for housework is becoming a reality – in India and elsewhere.
After more than 50 years of campaigning,wages for housework is becoming a reality – in India and elsewhere. By the International Wages for Housework Campaign, 15 December 2025 For more information contact: gws@globalwomenstrike.net or 020 7482 2496 We women are owed a debt and the first payments have come – more is expected as the…
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Visit Wages For Housework & English Collective of Prostitutes in major exhibition ‘Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights’
Wages for Housework Campaign & English Collective of Prostitutes in major exhibition Dear Friends, As part of International Women’s Week celebrations, we’re planning a group visit to see ‘Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights’ at the Wellcome Collection (183 Euston Road London NW1 2BE) on Sunday 9 March at 1pm. If you would like to join us,…
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Book Launch: 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 Promise features WFH founder Selma James (who turns 95 this year), co-ordinates the Global Women’s…
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Wages for Housework Campaign in major exhibition – Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights
‘Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights’ at the Wellcome Collection (London) explores “the profound impact of physical work on health and the body. It delves into the stories of underrepresented workers and their rights within precarious and unsafe labour environments. From protests to healing practices, the exhibition unveils hidden histories of resistance and collective action.…
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Why we support Andhra Pradesh Community Managed Farming: a grassroots rebuttal by Nina López and Selma James
In June 2024, the Global Women’s Strike was invited to speak at two sessions on A Care Income to Protect the Land, the People and the Natural World at the International Degrowth Conference in Pontevedra. At the second session, Swati Renduchintala presented via zoom on Andhra Pradesh Community Managed Natural Farming (APCNF) and the women’s Self-Help…
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.
Wages for Housework The Story of a Movement, an Idea, a Promise features WFH founder Selma James (now in her 90s), 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
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/02/the-guardian-view-on-womens-unpaid-labour-attitudes-have-shifted-but-the-burden-hasnt?CMP=share_btn_url
“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
RECENT RECOGNITION FOR SELMA
Selma James received the Sheila McKechnie long-term achievement award for 2021.
On 8 March 2022, City of Women London launched by Reni-Eddo Lodge, Rebecca Solnit and Emma Watson, renamed London’s underground stations after women or non-binary people who had shaped the city. Selma James was chosen to represent Kentish Town—the station closest to the Crossroads Women’s Centre where she and the WFH Campaign are based.
PRAISE FOR SELMA
“As the planet burns and pandemics rage, Selma James’s work with the Wages for Housework movement shows that we ignore the labor of care at our own peril…If there ever were a moment for James’s feminist vision, surely it is now.” Emily Callaci, Boston Review
“Written in James’s characteristically accessible, whip-smart and defiant voice, this collection is an important resource for anyone interested in organising for social change.” Dr Julia Downes, LSE Review of Books.
“Today, ‘intersectional feminism’ is a buzzword, and the value of caring is in the spotlight thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. But before that, James and her fellow activists were prominent campaigners for the rights of sex workers, lesbians, women of color, immigrants, asylum seekers, rape survivors, and working-class people, viewing all these as part of the same struggle.” Leila Hawkins, Yes Magazine.
About Black Women Bringing It All Back Home: “So many apparently unrelated aspects of women’s lives are brought together in a powerful analysis. A fascinating book.” New Approaches in Muti-Racial Education.
BOOKS by SELMA JAMES
Our Time Is Now: Sex, Race, Class, and Caring for People and Planet
Published: 2021
Author: Selma James • Foreword by Margaret Prescod • Editor: Nina Lopez
Subjects: Feminism / Economics
Sex, Race, and Class: The Perspective of Winning—A Selection of Writings 1952-2011,
Published: 2012
Author: Selma James
PM Press . Oakland
Hookers in the House of the Lord
Published: 2022
Author: Selma James
An account of the 1982 occupation of Holy Cross Church by the English Collective of Prostitutes to protest police Illegality and racism, with photos and press coverage from the time.
OTHER PUBLICATIONS INCLUDE
Marx and Feminism. Centrepiece 12, Selma James
Black Women Bringing It All Back Home, Margaret Prescod co-author, Falling Wall Press (Bristol, 1980)
For other publications by James and others see: https://
The work continues....
