Wages for Housework

By Carol Braund

"Women's exploitation in the home makes possible the exploitation of men's time and energy in their jobs. It's like the system says to men, 'You be our slave and we'll give you a slave," says Selma James,

Hogtown Press/cpf

founder of the International Wages for Housework Campaign. Ms. James was in Cleveland at CSU and CWRU on February 27 to raise money for IWFHC activities and discuss the need to obtain wages for housework for all.

At CSU James spoke on the subject, "Prosperity or Posterity: To Have or Not to Have Children". She began by emphasizing that women have never been the passive victims we have been led to believe. “The -fight to control our own bodies is an old fight,” she reminded the audience. For example, statistics show that 1870 was the beginning of a decline in the birth rate in the western, then industrializing, nations. James interprets this decline as evidence that women took steps (most likely abstinence), with or without their husbands' approval, to limit the size of their families. As children were taken out of the work force to attend school and men were taken out of the home to work in factories, women made the conscious choice to bear fewer children.

In the 1960's, welfare mothers in the U.S., particularly black women, fought for the right to stay home to raise their children and receive a decent "wage" from the government for doing that work. In England, women have won the right to a weekly government check for each of their children without regard to whether the mother is married or unmarried, wealthy or poor. However, Margaret Thatcher's government is presently threatening to abolish these payments for women's work in, the home.

The Wages for Housework Campaign continues the fight for more money for women's work. Housework is work that, benefits society; in fact, it makes possible the structure of our society. Women produce and daily renew the entire labor force. Nurturing children, caring for men's emotional and physical needs, the cleaning and the cooking, and the work of keeping ourselves together are all part of housework. For this reason, government should pay the money, the "wage", for this work and the money should be taken from the profits of business and industry, not from our own or men's pockets, says Selma James.

To find out more about the Wages for Housework Campaign, I talked with Phoebe Jones, co-founder of the Cleveland Wages for Housework Committee and contact person for the campaign in Ohio:

CB: What is the structure of the Wages for Housework organization?

PJ: There are Wages for Housework Committees throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia, and other countries which work with other groups

and individuals around time and money issues. Organized autonomously within the IWHC are Black Women for Wages for Housework and Wages Due Lesbians. By starting from their own needs, these women with less power provide leadership for all women and men. Recently, the groups have been working with Payday, an international group of men who are organizing for payment for their unpaid work and in support of the Wages for Housework Campaign.

CB: How are you going about trying to win wages for housework?

PJ: We've been involved in various struggles for more time and money and less work for women. We are responsible for the resolution on welfare passed at the International Women's Year Conference in Houston in 1977. The resolution stated that welfare should be called a wage, not charity, and called for increases in welfare payments and recognition of all housework as work. We've been lobbying for adoption of HEW's social security reform option which calls for social security payments for women based on an imputed economic value on housework. Other activities include the fight for decriminalization of prostitution, recognition of rape in marriage and compensation for rape victims, childcare services, and low cost programs which would make public recreation a reality for women. In Cleveland we have been working around the latter area. We've been organizing with the North American Network of Women Runners to win resources so that women can participate or excel in sports and recreational activities.

CB: What difference will WFH make in women's lives?

PJ: Right now, relations between men and women are based on men's economic superiority over us. As long as housework is unwaged, our relationships with others will be determined by men's power over us, and our economic dependence on them. Women are fighting daily for more money and less work and to make our lives our own. Wages for Housework would be a tremendous victory in that struggle and the process of winning it opens the way for all those with less power to win control over their lives.

Windows Boycott

-Take Back the Night Committee

In New York City recently, 300 Lesbians, gays and feminists united to protest the anti-Lesbian film Windows, which depicts a psychotic Lesbian killer who hires a man to rape her "best friend" with whom she is secretly in love. This United Artists film perpetuates and sensationalizes the most vicious ideas about lesbianism and rape. Under the guise of producing a "romantic thriller," Hollywood is trying to make some fast bucks by rehashing the old and tired stereotype that equates lesbianism with psychotic violence.

Organizers of the New York demonstration, citing a Congressional subcommittee, stated that rape and sexual molestation have reached epidemic proportions, affecting between a quarter and a third of the females in this country, However, this movie's depiction of rape, as a crime instigated by one woman against another can only be seen as the most gross distortion.

Demonstrations against Windows also occurred in Akron, Los Angeles and Seattle. When the movie appeared in Cleveland theatres recently, 26 men and women demonstrated at Northfield Plaza on March

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COMMENTARY

By Claudia Reiter

On March 22, 30,000 demonstrators marched to the Capitol in Washington, D.C. to protest the threatened reinstatement of a national military registration. The march was organized by the National Mobilization Against the Draft which advertised under the bold slogan: NO DRAFT, NO REGISTRATION, NO COLD WAR.

The marchers, gathering from all over the eastern seaboard and from as far west as Chicago, pushed briskly through the cold, windy streets of the capital city. Some quietly carried their banners of protest about no more Vietnams and no blood for oil. Many joined in with the occasional singsong chants, the alltoo-familiar echoes of the 1960's, such as "Hell, no, we won't go" and the strange new voice of the 1980's with words such as El Salvador and Texaco.

Although there were many groups concerned with peripheral issues, a shared awareness prevailed: that registration equals draft equals war. We Americans

Peoples History

"per averti INS

April 10, 1972.

US. BOMBING of dikes in northern Viet Nam begins, and continues thru May 24, sparking nation-wide demonstrations.

have learned that equation the hard way, and apparently this time many have not forgotten. The proof of this is that just two months after the first mention of the word "registration," 30,000 people gathered in the capital to say NO.

Hopefully, we have not forgotten that we face a formidable foe. If the gears of the war machine are being greased for motion, it is not by accident, and those who stand to benefit will not be dissuaded easily.

Observe, for instance, how we are invited to confuse the issues. One of the primary tactics has been the proposal to bring women in, the result being that we become distracted from the issue of the draft itself. The predictable outcome is that women will not be drafted. America is not going to let her flower of womanhood be sullied by combat. It is not going to let women waste their lives on war, but rather stay at home where it is "safe" and raise their children for the next war. Meanwhile the U.S. can maintain the illusion of its moral superiority—our women don't lie broken and bloody on the battlefield, only our young

men.

Another tactic is to appeal to an historical precedent. The long-standing moral antagonism between the U.S. and the Soviet Union makes the Russians an easy target for our outraged righteousness. Patriotism has a conveniently short memory.

The call to arms seems to bring out the best and the worst in human nature. We find a willingness to make sacrifices for a cause, untempered by a critical assessment of the cause itself. War depends on precisely that juxtaposition of honor and blind faith. If the war machine thrives on confusion and misguided values, then the exercise of the very freedoms it purports to defend will contribute to its demise. With that hope in mind, we speak and we write and we gather together. We remember that the equations of war are always balanced in favor of the rich and powerful. We will tell them that we have not forgotten, and don't intend to let others forget.

April, 1980/What She Wants/Page 3