← This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil
This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil
Wages For Housework with Emily Callici | 325
00:40:16
Nicole Kalil and historian Emily Callaci explore the history and urgency of the “Wages for Housework” movement — and why domestic labor deserves recognition, respect, and actual pay.
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- [00:01]
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- [01:08]
Nicole Kahlil
I am Nicole Kahlil and you're listening to the this Is Woman's Work podcast and today we're talking about something that frankly pisses me off. And it's this. The work that happens in inside the home. The work of parenting, caregiving, running a household, being treated like it's not real work. Like it doesn't deserve the same recognition, respect or compensation that working outside the home does. Sure, it's meaningful and can be rewarding, but let's be honest, it's also extremely hard work. Your pint sized or even elderly co workers can be real assholes. The kind that throw food at you, scream in your face and literally wipe their bodily fluids on your clothes. Nobody follows directions, nobody respects boundaries, and half the time you're not even sure who it is that's in charge. And there is no paycheck, no pto, no promotions or benefits, no handbook or clear job description. Just a constant feeling of being watched, judged and second guessed. Meanwhile, this invisible unpaid labor makes it possible for someone else to go out and do their job. And too often, the person doing this work at home is also holding down a paid job outside of the home. And yet somehow this labor inside the home gets taken for granted. No real value assigned, just the occasional I couldn't have done it without them speech like a pat on the head for keeping the whole damn operation running. And here's the thing. They're right. They abso fucking lutely couldn't have done it without them. Because without all that unpaid labor, all those tasks would have to be done by that person or be outsourced. We're talking a nanny, a cook, a housekeeper, a chauffeur, a tutor, an assistant, and suddenly we're able to put an actual value on that work, but for some reason we don't. We don't even try. And don't even get me started on the women who work inside the home that feel guilty about spending money or even worse, aren't even given access to the household income because they're, quote, unquot, quote, not the ones earning it. Friend, I'm all up on my soapbox today. So buckle up, buttercup, because I'm beyond energized to welcome today's guest, an expert who's been researching and writing about this very topic. Emily Kolachi is a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where she teaches courses on African history, reproductive politics, and global feminism. Her latest book, Wages for the Feminist Fight Against Unpaid labor, dives deep into this movement and asks us to consider, what if we valued caring for people and our environments as much as we value producing and consuming commodities? I mean, that's a pretty big question, friend. So, Emily, thank you for being our guest. Clearly, I have big feelings about this topic. So let me kick us off by asking what it is that you mean by wages for housework. What did I miss in my intro? What did I get wrong? What is wages for housework even mean?
- [04:20]
Emily Kolachi
Sure. And I just want to start by thanking you so much for that incredible introduction. I mean, the listeners can't see, but I'm like nodding vigorously, silent, clapping, like it pisses me off too, which is why I wrote this book. But wages for housework, it's a feminist movement from the 70s. It's actually a group of people that got together with this as their dimension demand. And you know, I came interested in this topic because I was facing this in my own life. You know, as you mentioned, I'm a professor of history. I'm also a parent. I have two young ones. I became a parent, I guess, seven years ago now. And you know, I was faced with that thing that so many of us are faced with, which is the double shift. You know, like, you know, you have a very, in this country, paltry maternity leave and then you're back at work and, and you're working these 18 hour days. You know, you, you wake up early in the morning to do all the care work, then you go do your full time job and then you come back and you do more care work. And, you know, I found myself wondering, you know, I grew up in the 90s with feminism. I You know, I've always been about girl power, and I've always really cared about things like, you know, equal pay for equal work and career opportunities for women. But I found that the feminism I kind of grew up with didn't talk about this part of the equation. I think I grew up thinking, oh, we solved that, you know? And so now I'm just working my ass off all the time. Like, I'm. I'm kind of asking myself, what have feminists had to say about this issue? So, of course, I'm an historian. The thing I do is I go to the archives and say, let me look at what feminists have said about this. And that's when I came across this, you know, little movement from the 70s or that started in the 70s called wages for Housework. And it was this group of really dynamic, you know, disruptive women who basically said, it's really important to have equal rights. It's really important to have abortion, equal pay. But there's a bigger issue, or not bigger, another issue here that's not being addressed, which is all this work that is happening that is necessary for the economy to work is not counted. And if you don't address that, you can't get at the bigger questions of inequality. I wrote a book looking into this movement, and it is organized around these five women who I found really interesting, who brought really different perspectives about housework to the table.
- [06:32]
Nicole Kahlil
So I'm a little upset that I didn't know about this movement or that it's been as long as far back as the 70s, and yet we're still talking about this, and at least in the United States, doesn't feel like we've made all that much progress, if any, and somehow sort of also feels like we're going backwards. So let's talk about a little bit about the lives of these five women that you feature in the book. Tell us a little bit about them and what we can gleam and learn and what's most relevant to us today.
- [07:01]
Emily Kolachi
Mm, sure. So, as I mentioned, I organized around these five women. The first one, you know, her name is Selma James, and she grew up in Brooklyn. And, you know, she was born in 1930, so she's now in her 90s. And she grew up like a radical leftist. Like, you know, she was a member of the Socialist Workers Party, you know, and, you know, it's largely, you know, working with this kind of movement that's largely about the working class and about men. You know, like, at a time when we thought of the working class as being People who go to a factory to work. But what she was doing as a kind of political person, an organizer, she was herself a single mother and a factory worker. She was going around to the homes where women who worked in the factories and at home were doing their housework, or to housewives and interviewing them about their lives. And her insight was, if you're talking about class politics and you're only talking about people who go to the workplace, to the factory, you're missing a big part of it, which is all these workers that are at home doing the dishes, doing the laundry, making it possible for the rest of us to go to work. She was really interested in this topic long before the 70s. But when the 70s moment hit, she was like, yes, feminism is what I've been talking about all along. And for me this is really about women's work. She started a branch in London, which is where she was living at the time. Then a second member of this movement is Mare Rosa Della Costa, who grew up in Italy. And she was part of the big student movement of the 60s. She protested the Vietnam War. She was in sit ins at university buildings trying to really, you know, part of that movement. And she was also part of a kind of big labor movement in Italy at that time, which was launching all these wildcat strikes across the factories of northern Italy. And she, kind of similar to Selma James, although independent of her, had a similar recognition, which is you can't just talk about work as happening in the factory. You know, she's someone who's a college age woman who is facing the fact that everyone expects her to graduate and go get married and have children and. And she's like, no, that's not what I want. So she really kind of thought about how, you know, to expand our idea about work to go beyond the factory to the home. You know, that, that was, you know, so. So she and Salma James met, started this movement, a branch in Italy, a branch in, in London. And then they're joined by Silvia Federici, who is. So she was a Philosophy PhD student, she was Italian, but she was in New York kind of, you know, working on her, her doctoral work. And she got really interested in this movement as well. And, you know, part of the sort of, you know, zeitgeist of 1970s New York was, you know, of course, the feminist movement, but also like massive budget cuts. You know, there's a match, a big austerity crisis. They're cutting public education, they're cutting subsidized daycare, they're cutting all These social programs. And you know, what Sylvia Federici and her kind of New York feminist sisters were arguing was that when you cut those programs, you're not just kind of being fiscally responsible, you're freeloading. Basically, like when you cut daycare, you're not getting rid of the need to care for children. You're just asking women to do it for free instead. So a fourth person that I write about in the book, and I apologize if I'm being a bit too long winded here. I'll try to be a bit.
- [10:10]
Nicole Kahlil
No, you're fine.
- [10:11]
Emily Kolachi
Is Wilmette Brown. So Lymette Brown. She's a black lesbian woman who grew up in Newark, New Jersey, you know, and she. She was a member of the Black Panther Party. She was an anti war protester. And she, you know, kind of got disillusioned with the Panther Party because of their gender politics. And so she kind of, you know, discovered wages for housework. And for her, it was a real turning point because she said, yes, as a black woman, this is so relevant to our experience as having historically, you know, for generations been doing unpaid and underpaid care work. You can go back to slavery, you can go back to colonialism. All these historical events of global importance that really were built on exploiting the unpaid work of black women. She started a group called Black Women for Wages for Housework. Then the fifth person I write about is Margaret Prescod. She was from Barbados, and she had this really interesting life experience where she grew up in a place where so many of the women in her community migrated abroad to work as nannies and domestics in London or New York. So she saw how all this work that women were doing really made the global north cities like New York and London function. And then she herself moved to Brooklyn as a teenager, and she encountered this sort of idea that immigrants are freeloaders. For her, it was exactly the opposite. All of their work was what was making the economy function. So when she joined Wages for Housework, she brought this whole kind of immigration perspective to it. And, you know, these women at the time, you know, in Wages for Housework, they were seen as really radical, as really kind of pushing the envelope, as you know, because you can imagine, this is a time when so many feminists were like, we don't want to talk about housework because we don't want to be associated with housework. We want to, you know, we want to be free of that work. But they were saying, you know, like, we need to actually recognize this, you know, to Compensate it, you know, and what they're trying to do was to really kind of change the whole system of how our economy works.
- [12:10]
Nicole Kahlil
Okay. My brain is going in 1 million different directions all at the same time. So first, I love these different perspectives because it's not all the same. And we're not just talking about the work from inside the home, you know, formally called stay at home parents. We're not just talking about. There's so many different elements of this. But ultimately, what we're saying is, regardless of who's doing it, though, the vast majority of the people who are doing it are women. Regardless of who's doing it, there is value to this work. It is necessary. Jessica Clarka wrote a book. It was like, How Women have Become America's Safety Net.
- [12:54]
Emily Kolachi
Yes.
- [12:55]
Nicole Kahlil
And that kept popping into my head while you were talking, where it's like, we're the ones who are allowing or these caregivers, these homemakers are the ones that are allowing all the other work to happen and allowing for us as a country to not have to provide these social programs or compensate or reward or recognize this labor that's being done, and that has huge value. Am I capturing this even moderately well?
- [13:26]
Emily Kolachi
Absolutely. Can I give you a statistic? I just looked it up, and I'm not an economist, but the U.S. bureau of Labor Statistics tried to calculate the value of women's work, you know, unpaid work, and it came to $3.6 trillion a year. That's a massive part of the economy. So, yeah, I mean, when you talk about, like, you know, economic growth and the importance of that thing, you know, what does it mean if we don't actually count that as part of the economy? And what does it mean if we don't actually give any support for it? That means women are kind of, you know, giving this for free when they, you know. Yeah.
- [13:57]
Nicole Kahlil
Anyway, well, and another thing that popped in my head with all of these movements, there always seems to be something that gets forgotten or missed or overlooked or left out. So you mentioned the Black Panther movement not being the policies or the forgotten element of the women. We think of the feminist movement, and there is a lot of, and I think very viable and real feelings that black women were left out. We think of women's work. This podcast is called this Is Woman's Work. It meant to be tongue in cheek because of, you know, how we used to define it. And so I kind of understand the inclination of wanting to separate woman's work from housework. And yet I have a firm belief that my Definition of woman's work is whatever feels true and real and right for you. And for many women, not just women, but for many women, that choice is to work inside the home. So that is woman's work, if you choose it. More importantly, I think women's work is that we all collectively support and demand that that work be valued. So how do we do that?
- [15:10]
Emily Kolachi
Yeah, absolutely. That's a great question. And, you know, I might mention that one of the kind of inspirations for Wages for housework was, you know, a more working class and black women's movement in the US which is the welfare rights movement. Right. And these were women, you know, who were recipients of welfare, you know, who in the 60s, you know, they argued, like, you know, welfare is not a handout, it's not charity, it's a wage. We're doing critically important work, you know, So I think there's a real opportunity there for feminists across lines of class, across lines of race, to come together and say, actually, there might be all these things that divide us demographically or in terms of wealth, in terms of class, but we all share this core thing, and we should stand up for each other in actually demanding a society that recognizes and compensates that. I think it was a real missed opportunity. And you mentioned some of the ways that the feminist movement has excluded black women or has had these different kinds of blinders on. And so I think that one of the things I find impressive and interesting about this moment of Wages for housework was how they did try to go across those boundaries. They did try to think about what does the suburban housewife in the kind of heterosexual nuclear family share with someone who is living and dealing with the extra work that comes with environmental racism and a neglectful landlord. Right. They're not in the same situation, but the fact that they're doing this work that is totally denigrated by society and not compensated is something they share in common and can potentially support each other in organizing behind. So that was one of the things I thought was interesting about this.
- [16:52]
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Emily Kolachi
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Nicole Kahlil
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Emily Kolachi
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- [18:19]
Nicole Kahlil
See mintmobile.com yeah, I think, you know, we think of the feminist movement or even just equity and wanting equality and oftentimes we go to like more women in the C Suite and great, I want that too. And to me this is so much more important. If we could address the caregiving work that's being done by those who are working full time and those who outside of the home and those who aren't, that to me would make the biggest difference and create the biggest opportunity for those who choose to work outside of the home or want to be in the C suite or want to grow and elevate in their roles. Because to me, it's not a merit issue whatsoever. The idea that women can't lead is the dumbest fucking thing I've ever heard. But what I think more often gets in the way of our ambitions, our talents, our opportunities is this pull back that so many of us feel. This not being able to do both at a high level, feeling like something is going to break, feeling exhausted all the time a lot of times because we have children and households to manage, but even caring for our aging parents. Or there's so many other ways that this is playing out that a lot of our male counterparts just aren't feeling they're not experiencing. I'll also add too, I read a study that the younger generation of women who are in college and graduating now are very much not attracted to the way their Gen X or older millennial parents have been doing it. This idea of doing both looks exhausting to them, and they want nothing to do with it.
- [20:06]
Emily Kolachi
Yeah. Yeah.
- [20:07]
Nicole Kahlil
So, okay, that was a lot. What are your reactions or responses to anything that I said?
- [20:13]
Emily Kolachi
Sure. Yeah. No, I'm interested, too. So I teach, you know, I teach undergraduates. So, like, you know, I'm in my 40s, but my students are, you know, late teens, early 20s, and I've been interested to see their reaction to this stuff. So, like, I've, you know, I teach a class on reproductive politics, and I've. I've assigned this essay called Wages Against Housework. You know, that was part of this movement. And when I first assigned it, you know, about 10 years ago when I first started teaching, students found it really interesting, kind of quirky, but they saw it really as an artifact of the past. You know, I think many of them are like, you know, I don't. I don't do housework. Like, I'm, you know, I'm 20, you know, but I'm surprised. I'm interested in the fact that when I assigned it more recently, students, like, are like, yeah, we get this. You know, like, this seems really vital. And I think part of it has to do with the pandemic. That was a time when you couldn't hide all the work that goes on. You'd sit in zoom meetings, and people would have kids on their laps. We saw how critical, essential work was, essential work of childcare. I think that students, young people, have an awareness of how much their own lives and how much society relies on that. I think a lot of them, like you say, are seeing what grind culture has done for us in terms of. It's a double shift, essentially. It's endless work. And I think a lot of people are questioning that. Right. And wondering, is that what it means to live a good life? So I do see a lot more interest in that, and I find that really interesting and potentially really exciting if students are at a point in their lives where they're thinking, maybe we should actually do things a little differently in our society.
- [21:46]
Nicole Kahlil
Yeah. Okay. So that leads me to my next question, is how do we do things a little differently in our society? Assuming that we believe that whoever it is, who is doing this currently unpaid work of caregiving, Household management. And when I say caregiving, yes, I mean children, but I also mean aging parents and all the different ways that if we think of social work, I think predominantly done by women. So even teaching, while it is paid work, it's dramatically underpaid work.
- [22:21]
Emily Kolachi
Yeah.
- [22:21]
Nicole Kahlil
So how do we. How could we. And I'm. I'm Going to ask this separately, though. I think both are essential. Value this work at a higher level, and then how do we compensate this work?
- [22:35]
Emily Kolachi
Yeah, that's kind of the big question, you know, And I mean, the question of how do we value it? You know, I mean, I think economists have all kind of tools for how they're trying to, you know, like, trying to. For example, you know, that $3.6 trillion figure I gave you, you know, I believe that was calculated, you know, by asking, like, what would this work actually cost if other people. If people were doing it, like, in the market, you know, like as a nanny or as a paid, you know, domestic or that kind of thing. But I think that, you know, so in the, you know, when the movement kind of started in the 70s, there was this sense of, like, you know, wages for housework, like, literally a wage being paid to people for. For housework. And I think there was a lot of debate about, do they really mean that? Like, do they really mean you should fill out a time card for, like, when you're, like, cleaning up the puke of your. Like, what? Like. And I think most people did not think that was the goal. Right. You know, like, I think it was a bigger question about recognizing that work in the economy. And some of the places where I see that idea kind of coming to fruition more recently. You know, I'll just name a couple, but one is. So a lot of the women who started this movement or were in this in the 70s are actually still together doing this work today. So, you know, particularly Selma James and Margaret Prescott. They've now renamed the campaign to be, I think, a little more inclusive and capacious, but they call it care income rather than wages for housework. So they're fighting for what they call care income now that really recognizes the rights of parents to care for their children, but also, as you mentioned, recognizing caring for the elderly, caring for people with disabilities, and also things like care that happens in the community. You can think about, for example, the ways in which, you know, in places where you have, you know, crumbling social structures, often it's women who kind of step in to do that work. So the care income is really kind of about, you know, taking a more capacious approach to care and seeking ways to kind of recognize and compensate that. Another place where I've seen this kind of idea come up is in proposals for the Green New Deal, and there are different versions of that in Europe, in the US but part of the idea is that so many of the industries that, you know, have been the most profitable that we think that we traditionally thought of as being really important to our economy, you know, are really terrible for the climate. And so I think part of the thinking is, how can we sort of, you know, in the longer term, reorient our economy towards less of that and more towards the kind of economic work that is, you know, maintaining our society, caring for our society, you know, protecting the environment. You know, particularly thinking about people who live, you know, in environmentally fragile areas or people who live in agricultural areas, you know, so thinking about that, caring for the planet as being part of what we think of as, you know, as housework. Right. A kind of extension of housework, you know, and then another place I've seen this come up is in conversations about guaranteed income or basic income. I know there's lots of different versions of this, you know, some I like more than others, but some of them have been, you know, for example, aimed at, for example, new. New mothers. Right. Who, you know, are caring for children are, you know, just are up against it in terms of what's required of them, you know, and so giving them a kind of income to allow them to do that work and to do, you know, to take care of themselves and their families. That's a policy that I think has been really interesting, and the results have been really, really positive. And then there's littler things like the child. The child tax credit. You know, that was a, in my view, an incredible policy in this country. I mean, we, you know, even beyond the issue of women's work, it also, you know, lifted children out of poverty. You know, like, so we have these, you know, this kind of suite of potential things we could do to actually compensate and uplift that work. So I think a combination of those things, you know, would really kind of help this issue.
- [26:19]
Nicole Kahlil
Yeah. As you were talking, different ideas were popping into my head. And ultimately where my brain went to is, this is a very complex issue. Yeah, it's, you know, not as simple. I mean, the belief that this work should be valued and compensated in some way is strong for me. How we do it, that feels a little complicated. You know, I go to, like, individual or internal ways, like I'm talking internally to your family. I think the reason my brain goes this way is my background is in financial planning. I worked for a Fortune 100 financial planning firm and worked with a ton of financial advisors and even went on meetings with some of them. And the amount of times that I observed, and it was 100% of the time, a man talking about their stay at Home or work inside the home spouse. And we were talking about life insurance, and they'd be like, oh, we don't need any on her. And like, I wanted to flip tables. I'm like, help me understand. Yeah, how you think you could still keep doing what you do for a living? Like, there's no financial implication if she weren't here to do all the shit that she's doing. Like, it was so confusing and frankly, just off putting. And then I talked to some friends where they're so girlfriends where their partner is the primary income earner, and this sort of guilt around spending money or not having money. And I'm like, isn't there some sort of internal conversation of some sort of stipend or dollar amount that you get from the household income because of your contribution to the household income? Because they couldn't go out and do the work. They couldn't go out and make the money without you. So there's that sort of internal component. Let me just pause because I have thoughts on the other side. But what other things should we be thinking about within our own families and units? Another idea too is like, when we think about elderly parents, oftentimes they're siblings involved, but more often than not, one person takes the brunt of the work. How is that person being compensated? For lack of a better term? So what, what should we be thinking inside our own homes? Don't even get me started on the single parent. Like, my brain is going all over the place. What should we be thinking about internally?
- [28:49]
Emily Kolachi
Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, I mean, so I don't know. I want to talk about it. I think that maybe the place I'm coming from is that part of wages for housework as a feminist movement was that you can't solve this as an individual. Right. It requires a collective change. Right. I could individually find a way out of this. Maybe I have a partner that shares the work equally with me. Maybe I have a lot of money and I don't have to, you know, I can. I can pay people to do this work or maybe, like, you know, there's some kind of, you know, individual way out. But I think that the changes that are needed are really collective ones, you know, like, and there are all kinds of instances, you know, where people, for example, like, find within their communities where ways to, like, kind of share and distribute that labor, you know. Yeah, but I think that's part of the problem is that, I mean, like, again, I think we could all find our own way to. To peace with that. Or to, you know, or to quietly being rage about it. But I think that really the answer is kind of collective.
- [29:48]
Nicole Kahlil
Um, yeah, I think you're probably right because you know, I think about it on an individual basis and it's like you've got to have the relationship with the other person or the other people involved in order to do that. It's so, so easy for me to say like, well, if I wasn't being recognized or rewarded or compensated, I just fucking leave. Because yeah, guess how much I'd have to pay then? You know, like, but you know, that's not always a viable option. That's not always the right option and that's just me being a jerk. Right. So on the more collective community or external options, you mentioned several. What about parental leave or care leave or. And we just feel like there's so many things we could be looking at and again, parental leave, to me that's just such a no brainer. And other countries are doing this and the fact that we can't figure it out is mind blasting. But even this concept of care leave, valuing the caring of our aging community because people are living longer and they earned and deserve our respect and yet the burden that that's become more frequently on women.
- [31:05]
Emily Kolachi
Absolutely.
- [31:06]
Nicole Kahlil
Again, it's like my brain wants to go to what's the solution? And the answer is very complex. Right?
- [31:12]
Emily Kolachi
Yeah, I mean, one of the things, I don't know if this is helpful at all thinking this through, but you know, one of the things I, you know, found people kind of talking about time and again is like, you know, is housework like just shitty or is it like, is it really rewarding and actually really skilled or is it kind of both, you know. Right. Like I don't particularly feel sublimely rewarded when I'm like, you know, scrubbing bananas off the floor. I really do find some aspects of it really kind of rewarding and fulfilling and of course very highly skilled, you know, so it's kind of like how we think about that work, you know, like wages for housework, you know, when it was first kind of proposed, is really about like, you know, supporting women in the home and supporting women, you know, to have more autonomy, for financial autonomy. Right. To not feel that they're the financial dependent of the male breadwinner. Right. But one of the questions that came up was, well, what if men want to do housework too? You know, and the answer was awesome. Like, you know, and maybe if this work was not so devalued and had no economic value in Our society. Maybe more men would do it. Right. Maybe that actually does. And, you know, it's been really interesting, like, you know, seeing the kind of ways that people have responded to my book, it's like I expected, you know, women of that generation to be like, well, yeah, like, obviously, this is really important. You know, like, I've been doing housework my whole life. Where's my paycheck? Where's my pension? Right. But I've been actually surprised by how many men, like, older men in particular have been like, wow. Like, I never thought about that. And now that I am thinking about it, oh, my God, Like, I didn't just write that novel by myself. Like, actually, there was somebody who made it possible for me to do that. I didn't just make all that money by my own. You know, I mean, partly by my own, but I didn't do that on my own. Like, I was part of, like, an economic unit that includes the person who was doing my laundry, the person who was keeping my house safe and hygienic. Like, you know, so I think that, like, it starts with recognizing that women do most of that work, and that is, you know, an incredible injustice. But, you know, I could imagine a future where uplifting that work becomes an issue for all of us, you know, because it's no longer considered just women's work.
- [33:16]
Nicole Kahlil
Yeah. So it was funny. My brain was going to this, like, if we want it to be valued and compensated at a higher level, then we need to get men to start doing it. And it sounded sort of flippant in my brain, but I didn't mean it that way. I think when other people who haven't historically been doing this work do the work, their respect for it goes up quite a deal. Because I work outside of the home, and I can tell you that the work that I do outside the home, I'm an entrepreneur, which is incredibly hard. I written a book. Incredibly hard. Like, there are so many things that I've done that are incredibly hard. And I will tell you that none of it is as hard as the work that I do inside the home. And, yes, it's rewarding. And, yes, I love my tiny human. And I can't even imagine having four or five, you know, like. And. And I think it is more valued inside my own household because my husband does a lot of that work himself. And so it speaks to what I think you just were saying, which is the element of recognition and experience of, in this case, men, because they haven't been the ones that have been historically Doing this work, I think, is really, really important for it to increase in value. Not because men should be the ones assigning value, but just because we it understand and value things more when we experience them.
- [34:47]
Emily Kolachi
I think I might flip that a little bit in that, like, I agree with you, what, everything you're saying. But it seems to me like the valuing, it should come first, and then maybe men would want to do it more rather than because men are doing it. You know, it's valuable. But I'm sure we've all experienced this thing, right, where we are, like, you know, taking our kids to the playground and, like, nobody says anything. And then, like, a man shows up with their kids, and everyone's like, what an amazing father. Spending time with their actual children, you know? So, like, I think we all see how that actually works, you know?
- [35:16]
Nicole Kahlil
Yeah, but I talk about that all the time. Jay always gets complimented on how engaged of a father he is. I've never once gotten the compliment that of what an engaged mother I am. And we both work full time. We both do really well for ourselves. It's this sort of. If anything, I'm sure that there are people who are not to my face because they wouldn't do, but behind the scenes, feeling really sorry for my kid because I'm not engaged enough as a mom. Right. Like, there's that double standard. Emily, I could talk to you about this all day long, and I know it is complex and there aren't any simple solutions. And I'm so grateful for you to be doing this work, bringing it to the forefront and sort of continuing this movement forward, this wages for housework, care income for our listener. Emily is not on social media, which you know, I love and respect. So the best way to find and support her and her work is to go get the book. Wages for housework, go to bookshop.org or go to your local bookstore. Let's keep them in business. Emily, thank you so much for the conversation and for being our guest.
- [36:29]
Emily Kolachi
Thank you so much. Nicole, thank you for your amazing, thoughtful questions. This is really a lot of fun.
- [36:33]
Nicole Kahlil
It's nice to get feisty with someone.
- [36:34]
Emily Kolachi
So.
- [36:35]
Nicole Kahlil
All right, friend, here's the deal. It's time we all stop pretending that the work inside the home is anything less than real, valuable, essential labor. Because here's the truth. If the unpaid, often invisible labor of caregiving, parenting, and homemaking suddenly disappeared tomorrow, the whole fucking system would collapse. The achievers, the grit and grinders, the alphas and the money makers would all come to a screeching halt. And then they'd know. Our caregivers are allowed to take up space. They should spend the money they've earned. They deserve to name the value of the work that they do. And we damn well should, too. Because knowing that none of this work works without them, that is woman's work.