Wages for housework: the daring 1970s campaign that challenged women's roles

Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine. In the 1970s, a global group of feminist activists banded together with one demand, wages for housework. Emily Callacci explores this campaign in her Cundal History Prize nominated book, Wages for Housework, and, in this episode, she speaks to Ellie Cawthorne about why the idea of women being compensated for unpaid household labour caused such a stir at the time and continues to resonate today. We're going to be talking about the wages for housework movement of the 1970s today. So what first drew you?

to this story. So, you know, I'm an historian, but actually what drew me to this topic originally was making sense of my own life. Back around 2017, I had my first child. And like many new parents, you know, I found myself doing a double shift, taking care of this, this helpless infant all through the night. And then, you know, after my maternity leave ended, going back to my full-time job.

And like many new parents, you get all kinds of advice about how to handle this work, you know, how to be more efficient, how to have work-life balance, whatever that means, um how to outsource some of it, you know, to nannies and house cleaners and that kind of thing. But, you know, while much of the uh advice was really well-intentioned, I really found it frustrating. You know, I really wanted to understand the bigger picture here. You know, why do we organize our our society in this way?

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