Shows
Old Mole Variety HourThe Story of Wages for HouseworkLaurie Mercier speaks with Emily Callaci, Professor of History at the
University of Wisconsin Madison, about her new book Wages for Housework: The
Story of a Movement, an Idea, a Promise. They discuss how capitalism depends
on unpaid reproductive labor and how the global...
2026-05-1100 min
The Watt From Pedro Show2026-05-03 The Watt from Pedro Showhour one:
"untitled original" (excerpt from the unissued seattle broadcast from sep 30, 1965) john coltrane sextet
"town elders" george usher
"stevensonville" george usher
"beacon sighted through fog" (live from studio z at kpfk on nov 7, 1982) - minutemen
"da, da, da, da, da, da...... da!" old man fuck you
"that world / this world" (live in new york city on sep 29, 2023) daniel carter / charlie apicella
"die aufgabe" studiogegner
"nightmoves" (acapella) thanksmate
"pipe dope" (from the "righteous old stuff" cassette) joe brewer
"taravista" crippling alcoholism featuring luxury skin
"blues is the cats meow" (meowmix) jerry king + mike watt
"not the tremblin' kind" george usher
...
2026-05-033h 00
The Watt From Pedro Show2026-04-27 The Watt from Pedro Showhour one:
"my favorite things" (live excerpt from birdland on feb 10 1962) john coltrane
"wake up scene" emily robb
"shiny sister theme" emily robb
"life as a rehearsal" (live from studio z at kpfk on nov 7, 1982) - minutemen
"hino maru" nashi
"can" mikan mukku
"hakoari no uta" uju gyps
"kakuseiki" urrealistic men
"beddy-bye girl" kaoru arimoto
"computer fight" (live at studio ores - jan 31 2026) 6eyes
"I love the crickets" corvus crorson
"last won" stabercrombie watt
"waiting" (from the "righteous old stuff" cassette) joe brewer
"live excerpt from the yukobari show on @thelotradio in brooklyn" (aug 27, 2024) victoria shen
"hell music" emily robb
...
2026-04-273h 00
Broad History"All work is sh*t" or the anti Girl Boss feminism of the 1970s (Emily Callaci)In the 1970s, Wages for Housework demanded pay for cooking and cleaning without any illusions about making it in the workplace. What if work was never our liberator? On this episode:
Isabelle Roughol - Host
Emily Callaci - Guest
Listen early and without ads. Become a member at www.broadhistory.com.
★ Support this podcast ★
🇬🇧 Buy the book in the UK: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/9178/9780241502907🇺🇸 Buy the book in the US: https://bookshop.org/a/79408/9781541603516(Affiliate bookshop.org links support Broad History and indie bookstores.)Click here to watch a video o...
2026-03-2443 min
Hidden Half Book Review: from the Remedial Herstory ProjectE23 Wages for Housework, January 2026Put down your vacuum and take to the streets with our first book of the year, Wages of Housework: The Story of a Movement, an Idea, a Promise by Emily Callaci! Kick back and enjoy a little leisure while Victoria and Katherine tally up their unpaid working hours, see welfare in a new light, and consider the political ramifications of the invisible work of women.Check out the Hidden Half Book Club socials at https://linktr.ee/hiddenhalfbookDonate to the Remedial Herstory Project: https://www.remedialherstory.com/givingAnd learn more about the...
2026-01-2953 min
New Books in Political ScienceEmily Callaci, "Wages for Housework: The Feminist Fight Against Unpaid Labor" (Seal Press, 2025)Across the globe in the 1970s, a network of feminists distilled their struggles into a single demand: Wages for Housework! Today, it remains a provocative idea, and an unfulfilled promise.
In Wages for Housework: The Story of a Movement, an Idea, a Promise (Penguin/Seal Press 2025), historian Emily Callaci tells the story of this campaign by exploring the lives and ideas of its key creators – Selma James, Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Silvia Federici, Wilmette Brown, and Margaret Prescod - tracing their wildly creative political vision over the past five decades. Drawing on new archival research and extensive interviews, Callaci t...
2025-11-2146 min
New Books in HistoryEmily Callaci, "Wages for Housework: The Feminist Fight Against Unpaid Labor" (Seal Press, 2025)Across the globe in the 1970s, a network of feminists distilled their struggles into a single demand: Wages for Housework! Today, it remains a provocative idea, and an unfulfilled promise.
In Wages for Housework: The Story of a Movement, an Idea, a Promise (Penguin/Seal Press 2025), historian Emily Callaci tells the story of this campaign by exploring the lives and ideas of its key creators – Selma James, Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Silvia Federici, Wilmette Brown, and Margaret Prescod - tracing their wildly creative political vision over the past five decades. Drawing on new archival research and extensive interviews, Callaci t...
2025-11-2046 min
New Books in Economic and Business HistoryEmily Callaci, "Wages for Housework: The Feminist Fight Against Unpaid Labor" (Seal Press, 2025)Across the globe in the 1970s, a network of feminists distilled their struggles into a single demand: Wages for Housework! Today, it remains a provocative idea, and an unfulfilled promise.
In Wages for Housework: The Story of a Movement, an Idea, a Promise (Penguin/Seal Press 2025), historian Emily Callaci tells the story of this campaign by exploring the lives and ideas of its key creators – Selma James, Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Silvia Federici, Wilmette Brown, and Margaret Prescod - tracing their wildly creative political vision over the past five decades. Drawing on new archival research and extensive interviews, Callaci t...
2025-11-2046 min
New Books in Women's HistoryEmily Callaci, "Wages for Housework: The Feminist Fight Against Unpaid Labor" (Seal Press, 2025)Across the globe in the 1970s, a network of feminists distilled their struggles into a single demand: Wages for Housework! Today, it remains a provocative idea, and an unfulfilled promise.
In Wages for Housework: The Story of a Movement, an Idea, a Promise (Penguin/Seal Press 2025), historian Emily Callaci tells the story of this campaign by exploring the lives and ideas of its key creators – Selma James, Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Silvia Federici, Wilmette Brown, and Margaret Prescod - tracing their wildly creative political vision over the past five decades. Drawing on new archival research and extensive interviews, Callaci t...
2025-11-2046 min
New Books in GenderEmily Callaci, "Wages for Housework: The Feminist Fight Against Unpaid Labor" (Seal Press, 2025)Across the globe in the 1970s, a network of feminists distilled their struggles into a single demand: Wages for Housework! Today, it remains a provocative idea, and an unfulfilled promise.
In Wages for Housework: The Story of a Movement, an Idea, a Promise (Penguin/Seal Press 2025), historian Emily Callaci tells the story of this campaign by exploring the lives and ideas of its key creators – Selma James, Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Silvia Federici, Wilmette Brown, and Margaret Prescod - tracing their wildly creative political vision over the past five decades. Drawing on new archival research and extensive interviews, Callaci t...
2025-11-2046 min
American Campus PodcastUniversity Keywords with Andy HinesReferences and suggested readings:Andy Hines, ed. 2025. University Keywords. Johns Hopkins University Press. Alyssa Battistoni. 2025. Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature. Princeton University Press.Emily Callaci. 2020. “On Acknowledgments.” American Historical Review 125 (1): 126–31.Justin Raden. October 23, 2025. Higher Ed's Rush To Adopt AI Is About So Much More Than AI. Defector.Bluesky @andyhines.bsky.social aydelotte.swarthmore.edu@AydelotteFoundation on InstagramAbbie Boggs, Eli Meyerhoff, Nick Mitchell, and Zach Schwartz-Weinstein. January 19, 2022. Abolitionist University Studies: An Invitation. Viewpoint Magazine. Abolish the University? Pamphlet, Abolitionist University StudiesEmail Lauren at shephell@iu.edu to join the Political Economy of the Academy groupText the...
2025-11-1247 min
History in FocusMistakes I Have MadeWhat if historians could own up to their mistakes? Or learn to see their mistakes not as weaknesses to be hidden but as a necessary part of the process of growth and discovery? That is what a recent special edition of the History Unclassified section of the journal explores. That edition, "Mistakes I Have Made," includes reflections from nine contributors as well as from section editors Kate Brown and Emily Callaci. We speak, in turn, with all of them in this episode.
2025-11-0548 min
Socialism ConferenceWages for Housework: The Feminist Fight Against Unpaid LaborEmily Callaci and Sarah Leonard speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2025. Join historian Emily Callaci for a timely exploration of an often overlooked movement for economic and social justice: the Wages for Housework movement demanded wages for domestic labor as a starting point for remaking the world as we know it. Drawing on the campaign's 1970s roots in the US, Italy, and Britain, Callaci will discuss the revolutionary potential of this radical movement and its lessons for today's feminist organizers.The next Socialism Conference will be held in Chicago, September 4-7, 2026. Learn more about...
2025-09-2949 min
HistoryExtra podcastWages for housework: the daring 1970s campaign that challenged women's rolesIn the 1970s, a global group of feminist activists banded together with one demand: 'wages for housework'. Emily Callaci explores this campaign in her Cundill 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.
To find out more about the Cundill History Prize, go to www.cundillprize.com.
(Ad) Emily Callaci is the author of Wages for Housework: The Story of...
2025-09-2228 min
London Review Bookshop PodcastEmily Callaci & Helen Charman: Wages for HouseworkIn Wages for Housework (Allen Lane) Emily Callaci, professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, tells the story of a movement that shot to prominence in the 1970s, distilling a century of feminist struggle and critique into a single bold slogan. Focusing on five women who helped forge and fight for it – Selma James, Mariarosa Della Costa, Silvia Federici, Wilmette Brown and Margaret Prescod – Callaci takes us deep inside the heart of the movement as it reached across Europe, America, Africa and the Caribbean. For these women, the wage was more than a demand for money: it was a st...
2025-09-0354 min
Moral Revolution PodcastThe Care Revolution: Silvia Federici on Feminism, Capitalism, and Re-enchanting the WorldIn the latest episode of Moral Revolution, I had the profound honor of speaking with Silvia Federici: scholar, activist, and a relentless voice for justice. Our conversation, sparked by my own discovery of her work during the pandemic via the New York Times, delves deep into themes that are as urgent as ever.Key Takeaways:* The Origins and Power of “Wages for Housework”Federici recounts the birth of the movement in the 1970s, challenging both leftist orthodoxy and mainstream feminism by asserting that unpaid care and domestic work are not only essential but foundational to capi...
2025-07-2538 min
Critically SpeakingDr. Emily Callaci: Wages for HouseworkIn this episode, Therese Markow and Dr. Emily Callaci discuss the Wages for Housework movement, highlighting the 1970s campaign demanding payment for unpaid labor in the home or "housework". Dr. Callaci explains the movement's relevance today, noting that women's unpaid work has significant economic consequences. The conversation explores the historical context, the five key figures behind the movement, and the economic and cultural implications of unpaid housework. Callaci emphasizes the need for recognition of and payment for housework to address gender inequality and improve women's autonomy and economic well-being. Key Takeaways: A recent st...
2025-07-2240 min
Time to Leanis it fair to feel upset if i ask for help and your response isn't eager?In this episode, we talk about how vulnerable it can feel to name a need, the weight of perceived pushback, and how quickly it can spiral. We dig into what we call the nag paradox—that toxic loop of asking, resisting, escalating, and shutting down—and how it traps so many of us in a cycle of sacrifice, resentment, and disconnection.Mentioned:Wages For Housework by Emily Callaci Get resources, ad-free episodes, and more at timetoleanpod.substack.comPreorder No More Mediocre: A Call To Reimagine Our Relationships And Dema...
2025-07-161h 01
This Is Woman's Work with Nicole KalilWages For Housework with Emily Callici | 325Let’s talk about the most essential job that no one wants to call a job: the work done inside the home.
Parenting. Caregiving. Running a household. It’s all real work — valuable, skilled, and foundational. And yet, it’s often dismissed, devalued, and definitely unpaid. This week, we’re going all in on the fight to change that narrative.
Nicole is joined by historian and professor Emily Callaci, whose latest book Wages for Housework: The Feminist Fight Against Unpaid Labor uncovers the radical movement that dared to ask: what if we paid people for domestic l...
2025-07-0938 min
Intelligence SquaredRevisiting Wages for Housework, with Emily CallaciUnpaid domestic labor has long been the invisible backbone of economies worldwide - but what if it were compensated? In this episode, historian Emily Callaci takes us inside the Wages for Housework movement, a bold and controversial campaign that emerged in the 1970s. Drawing on her new book, Wages for Housework: The Story of a Movement, an Idea, a Promise, Callaci tells the story of this campaign by exploring the lives and ideas of its key creators, tracing their wildly creative political vision over the past five decades. Joining Ca...
2025-03-3142 min
A Public AffairIs It Love or Unpaid Labor?
On today’s show, host Ali Muldrow speaks with Emily Callaci, author of Wages for Housework: The Feminist Fight Against Unpaid Labor. In it, Callaci writes about the second-wave feminist movement, Wages for Housework, and the important questions about unpaid labor, gender, economy, and social reproduction that it raised. Muldrow calls the book “immensely relevant for this moment.”
Callaci describes the 1970s as a time when social movements were focused on expanding people’s rights. But the Wages for Housework movement tried to address what they thought was a fundamental source of inequality: the econo...
2025-03-1952 min
Unsung HistoryWages for HouseworkIn March 1972, Selma James distributed a pamphlet that declared: “If we raise kids, we have a right to a living wage. . . WE DEMAND WAGES FOR HOUSEWORK. All housekeepers are entitled to wages. (Men too).” Soon it was a global movement, with Wages for Housework branches in the United Kingdom, Italy, the United States, and several other countries, and autonomous groups like Black Women for Wages for Housework and Wages Due Lesbians. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Emily Callaci, Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of Wages for Housework: The Feminist Fight Against Unpaid Labo...
2025-03-1742 min
Red MedicineA History of Wages for Housework w/ Emily CallaciEmily Callaci unpacks the history and legacy of Wages for Housework, the feminist movement that demanded payment for the unpaid work of women required to sustain capitalism. She discusses five women at the centre of this movement: Selma James, Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Silvia Federici, Wilmette Brown, and Margaret Prescod. Emily Callaci is a historian and writer, currently Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the author of Street Archives and City Life and Wages for Housework: The Story of a Movement, an Idea, a Promise.
SUPPORT: www.buymeacoffee.com/re...
2025-03-1157 min
Standard Issue PodcastEmily Callaci wants Wages for HouseworkLike many new parents, Emily Callaci - writer and professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison - was amazed by the amount of housework that came with looking after small children. Her new book, Wages for Housework, is a history of the fascinating movement of the same name and explores how feminists before her have approached the dilemma of under-valued and unpaid work. Jen caught up with Emily to talk about the movement, why we could do with it making a comeback, and how different the world might look if essential work was valued differently.
2025-03-0328 min
Free Audiobook: Because Folding Laundry Is More Exciting With a StoryWages For Housework: The Story of a Movement, an Idea, a Promise - Emily CallaciListen to this audiobook in full for free onhttps://hotaudiobook.com/freeTitle: Wages For Housework: The Story of a Movement, an Idea, a PromiseAuthor: Emily CallaciNarrator: TBDFormat: UnabridgedLength: 0:00:00Language: EnglishRelease date: 02-13-2025Publisher: PGRH UKGenres: History, Non-Fiction, World, Social ScienceSummary:Brought to you by Penguin.
'The women of the world are serving notice! We want wages for every dirty toilet, every indecent assault, every painful childbirth, every cup of coffee and every smile. And if we...
2025-02-1300 minFree Audiobook: Because Folding Laundry Is More Exciting With a StoryWages For Housework: The Story of a Movement, an Idea, a Promise - Emily CallaciListen to the full audiobook free with a 30-day free trial :https://esound.space/fullTitle: Wages For Housework: The Story of a Movement, an Idea, a PromiseAuthor: Emily CallaciNarrator: TBDFormat: UnabridgedLength: 0:00:00Language: EnglishRelease date: 02-13-2025Publisher: PGRH UKGenres: History, Non-Fiction, World, Social ScienceSummary:Brought to you by Penguin.
'The women of the world are serving notice! We want wages for every dirty toilet, every indecent assault, every painful childbirth, every cup of coffee and every smile. And...
2025-02-1300 min
Step Inside A Must-Listen Full Audiobook On Your Commute.Wages for Housework by Emily CallaciPlease visithttps://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/2/audible/165089to listen full audiobooks.
Title: Wages for Housework
Author: Emily Callaci
Narrator: Kate Winter
Format: mp3
Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
Release date: 02-13-25
Ratings: Not rated yet
Genres: Labor & Industrial Relations
Publisher's Summary:
Launched in the early 1970s in the United States, Italy and the UK, Wages for Housework was a political movement making the case that women who did all the care work at home deserved to be paid. Like many revolutionary ideas, it remained an unfulfilled promise. It is a feminist path not taken. Here historian Emily Callaci tells the enthralling...
2025-02-1310h 40
Start the WeekWages for Housework – then and nowFrom the early 1970s feminist activists from across the globe campaigned under a single demand – Wages for Housework. The historian Emily Callaci traces the lives and ideas of its key creators in her new book, Wages for Housework: The Story of a Movement, an Idea, a Promise. The campaign highlighted the need to change the way work, and especially what has been traditionally deemed women’s work, is valued. Although men are still paid more than women, and women still play a greater role in the home, recent polling reveals that nearly half of Britons say women's equa...
2025-02-1041 min
To The Best Of Our KnowledgeHow Africans Are Building The Cities Of The FutureAfricans are moving into cities in unprecedented numbers. Lagos, Nigeria, is growing by 77 people an hour — it's on track to become a city of 100 million. In 30 years, the continent is projected to have 14 mega-cities of more than 10 million people. It's perhaps the largest urban migration in history.These cities are not like Dubai, or Singapore, or Los Angeles. They’re uniquely African cities, and they’re forcing all of us to reconsider what makes a city modern. And how and why cities thrive.To find out what's going on, we go to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to tal...
2021-07-1751 minTo The Best Of Our KnowledgeHow Africans Are Building The Cities Of The FutureAfricans are moving into cities in unprecedented numbers. Lagos, Nigeria, is growing by 77 people an hour — it's on track to become a city of 100 million. In 30 years, the continent is projected to have 14 mega-cities of more than 10 million people. It's perhaps the largest urban migration in history.These cities are not like Dubai, or Singapore, or Los Angeles. They’re uniquely African cities, and they’re forcing all of us to reconsider what makes a city modern. And how and why cities thrive.To find out what's going on, we go to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to tal...
2021-07-1751 min
New Books in African StudiesEmily Callaci, "Street Archives and City Life: Popular Intellectuals in Postcolonial Tanzania" (Duke UP, 2017)Emily Callaci's book Street Archives and City Life. Popular Intellectuals in Postcolonial Tanzania (Duke University Press, 2017) tells the histories of the young migrants who shaped the city of Dar es Salaam between 1967 and 1985. During this period, the ruling party, TANU, pursued the policy of Ujamaa or African socialism which sought the future of African independence in traditional villages and rural areas rather than cities. Despite the increasingly anti-urban policies of the Tanzanian state, and the stringent economic and social conditions that prevailed in Dar es Salaam, young migrants continued to move to the city. Armed with the abili...
2021-04-071h 03
New Books in Urban StudiesEmily Callaci, "Street Archives and City Life: Popular Intellectuals in Postcolonial Tanzania" (Duke UP, 2017)Emily Callaci's book Street Archives and City Life. Popular Intellectuals in Postcolonial Tanzania (Duke University Press, 2017) tells the histories of the young migrants who shaped the city of Dar es Salaam between 1967 and 1985. During this period, the ruling party, TANU, pursued the policy of Ujamaa or African socialism which sought the future of African independence in traditional villages and rural areas rather than cities. Despite the increasingly anti-urban policies of the Tanzanian state, and the stringent economic and social conditions that prevailed in Dar es Salaam, young migrants continued to move to the city. Armed with the abili...
2021-04-071h 00
New Books in the Indian Ocean WorldEmily Callaci, "Street Archives and City Life: Popular Intellectuals in Postcolonial Tanzania" (Duke UP, 2017)Emily Callaci's book Street Archives and City Life. Popular Intellectuals in Postcolonial Tanzania (Duke University Press, 2017) tells the histories of the young migrants who shaped the city of Dar es Salaam between 1967 and 1985. During this period, the ruling party, TANU, pursued the policy of Ujamaa or African socialism which sought the future of African independence in traditional villages and rural areas rather than cities. Despite the increasingly anti-urban policies of the Tanzanian state, and the stringent economic and social conditions that prevailed in Dar es Salaam, young migrants continued to move to the city. Armed with the abili...
2021-04-071h 00