About Us
We are an international grassroots network campaigning for recognition and payment for all caring work, in the home and on the land.
As part of a dynamic change of direction we demand a guaranteed income for all – of all genders and identities, beginning with mothers, Indigenous peoples and natural farmers – who do the work of:
- caring for people of every age and condition;
- protecting and regenerating the land and the water from poisonous chemicals which ruin the soil, the health of those who work it, the nutritional value of the food, and the climate;
- defending human rights and the natural world, risking their lives;
- surviving and resisting the climate change we did not cause which, following centuries of imperialist plunder, is endangering lives and livelihoods in the Global South, forcing millions to leave their home and all they hold dear.
For more information about us click here.
Contact details
Email: gws@globalwomenstrike.net
Address: Crossroads Women‘s Centre, 25 Wolsey Mews, London NW5 2DX.
Phone: +44 20 7482 2496
Our History
In March 1972, at the Women’s Liberation conference in Manchester, England, Selma James put forward Wages for Housework for the first time. It was one of six demands in the pamphlet Women, the Unions and Work…or What Is Not to Be Done, written for the conference.
It is now 50 years that WFH has been campaigning for financial recognition for the biological and societal work of reproducing the whole human race – whatever else women do.
This caring work goes on almost unnoticed everywhere, in every country and culture. It is rarely prioritised economically, politically or socially, and women are discriminated against and impoverished for doing it.
The WFH Campaign has been shaped by the autonomous organisations that formed within it – women of colour, queer women, sex workers, women with disabilities, single mothers, and a men’s network which shares its perspective on caring and autonomy. It confronts poverty, sexism, racism, deportation, criminalisation, rape, militarism, the theft and destruction of land and the natural world, and other forms of violence and discrimination against any gender. It defends the relationships we choose, and especially the bond between mother and child.
In 2000, the WFH Campaign launched the Global Women’s Strike (GWS). Since 2021 its Care Income Now campaign brings together the care and protection of people and the planet. Its international network over the years has included Canada, France, Germany, Guyana, India, Ireland, Italy, Peru, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, Trinidad & Tobago, Uganda as well as UK and US, and contacts in many other countries.
Archives: 50 YEARS OF CAMPAIGNING
Latest News
Event: London Land Justice Fair, 21 July, 12-6pm
We’ll be running a stall, and a workshop on land use in the women-led natural farming movement in Andhra Pradesh, India. All welcome!
Webinar : What Mothers and Other Caregivers Want – findings from international survey, May 11
From March 2022 to May 2023, this survey asked 1065 mothers and other caregivers from different generations and in different countries what they want and need. Assumptions are always being made about this, but in fact caregivers are rarely directly asked about how we spend our time, the resources we have or don’t have, or…
Webinar: Compensating Care: How U.S. Policy Can Support Unpaid Family Caregivers
TODAY, May 2 – join us for this pathbreaking one hour webinar on Compensating Care: How U.S. Policy Can Support Unpaid Family Caregivers, Thursday, May 2, 2-3pm Eastern Time, 11am-12noon Pacific Time – It is a joint event by the Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP), Global Women’s Strike & Women of Color/GWS.…
Congress: Don’t exclude the most vulnerable children from the Child Tax Credit!
URGENT! Please ask Congressional leadership and your reps to make critical improvements to the Child Tax Credit (CTC) in the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act of 2024, the bi-partisan bill now under consideration. ⚡ Also call and tweet your members of Congress and Congressional leadership, see below While there are some positive…
Tweets: Congress, don’t exclude the most vulnerable children from the Child Tax Credit!
URGENT: Tax Relief for American Families & Workers Act is being voted on as soon as week of Jan 29. Tell Congressional leaders & your reps to strengthen it to include covering the poorest children in #ChildTaxCredit. ✍ https://actionnetwork.org/letters/congress-dont-exclude-the-most-vulnerable-children-from-the-child-tax-credit/ URGENT! @RepJeffries @SpeakerJohnson @SenSchumer @LeaderMcConnell don’t leave the poorest, most vulnerable children out of #ChildTaxCredit. The…
The compromise Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act of 2024 leaves out the most impoverished families while giving big tax benefits to corporations
We are mothers, grandmothers and other unpaid family caregivers who have been pressing for reinstatement of the expanded child tax credit (CTC) and for our caregiving work to be valued and supported. We recognize and appreciate the effort that went into this bi-partisan proposal, but it must not exclude the most impoverished children. Representative DeLauro,…
Letter: to the Government of Ireland, in relation to the proposed wording of the amendments to the Irish constitution on Women and Family
We write as women’s and community organisations with concerns about the proposed wording of the Amendments to the Irish Constitution on Women and the Family, which are to go to referendum in March 2024, and are scheduled to be discussed in the Dáil this week. Having been tasked by the Government with bringing forward proposals…
Mothers Manifesto outside Parliament today!
Dear friends The Global Women’s Strike will be supporting the Mother’s Manifesto on Wednesday 13 December, 9.30-2pm, on their stall outside Parliament while some of them meet MPs inside. We hope you will join us there for all or some of the time. Mother’s Manifesto are a group of mothers who have been campaigning for 18 months to raise awareness of family food poverty and…
Urgent: Tell Congress, Include Extended CTC in End Of Year Tax Package!
How long will the richest country in the world tolerate millions of our children in poverty? Urgent action needed to bring back extended CTC, which lifted millions of children out of poverty! The time is NOW to contact Congress because the reinstatement of the expanded Child Tax Credit is being debated as part of negotiations…
Press release: Wages for Housework film All Work and No Pay at Tate Exhibition Women in Revolt.
The Wages for Housework film All Work and No Pay is part of the major Tate Britain exhibition Women in Revolt which opens tomorrow 8 November 2022 and runs until April 2024. The film was made by the Wages for Housework Campaign (WFH) with the BBC community access unit Open Door in 1975. It provided…