Wages for Housework

Wages for housework is a proposal to compensate for work done in the private or domestic sphere. Such work includes, but is not limited to, providing household services that facilitate the laborer's entry into the public workplace (cooking, cleaning, etc.), reproductive activities such as bearing and rearing children, and caring for elderly parents and other dependent persons. The wages-for-housework campaign is usually rooted in the Marxist critique of capitalism; it was advanced by numerous social activists, anticapitalists, and feminists dating back at least as far as the mid-1800s.

Prior to the age of industrialism, the domestic sphere was not sharply split from the productive sphere. Textiles and agricultural products were created within domestic units. With the rise of industrialism, the public workplace replaced the private home ...