Housewife Leads Demand For Wages Little-Known Women’s Movement Finally Generates Some Interest

She slaved over stoves, mopped up messes, toiled over toilets and took care of kids.

Margaret Prescod says enough is enough - she wants the days of free housework to come to an end.

For the last 22 years, Prescod has been trying to get the pay she says women deserve, not only in the work force, but in the home.

The idea and the little-known women’s movement she helps lead, the Wages for Housework Campaign, are beginning to generate interest in Washington.

“Wages for housework may seem like just a crazy idea, like just another woman-led agenda. But this is more than that. It’s an economic and family issue for the entire country,” said Anne Mosle, director of women’s policy at the Center for Policy Alternatives, a nonpartisan Washington organization concerned with strengthening families and communities.

The U.N. Development Program has estimated that women contribute $11 trillion in unpaid or underpaid work to the global economy.

A 1996 national opinion poll conducted by the Center for Policy Alternatives found that three of every four women say they do most of their family’s household chores, and leaders of the Wages for Housework Campaign say housework is what gives men the time to pursue careers.

Housework “is not something we just do from the heart. And it’s definitely not my nature to clean the toilet. This is central to the functioning of the United States and we need all the support we can to make it possible,” Prescod said.

Payment could come in the form of tax breaks or family allowances, such as those given in France, Hungary, Israel and Argentina, Prescod said.

National labor officials are discussing the issue.

They met with experts in November to find how to measure and value unwaged work to see how it contributes to the economy, said Diane Herz, an economist for the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The President’s Interagency Council on Women also is considering a task force to promote the issue.

“But this conversation is just being started. The whole thing is up in the air,” Herz said. “We don’t even know if we can do the data. Trying to place a value on these kinds of jobs is a hard one.”

It is a problem that could take years to solve, Herz said.

That kind of delay is what keeps Patsy Albright, a single mother in Philadelphia, discouraged.

“If you’re in the Army and kill, it’s seen as work. But if you’re a mother and raising kids it isn’t seen as work,” she said. “That’s just not right.”

Some housewives and scholars worry the Wages for Housework Campaign will set women back.

Heidi Brennan, 44, a mother of five, said she fears the government would place little value on what she does at home, making it difficult for her to justify being a nonworking mother.

“I wouldn’t want a young 26-year-old with a master’s degree and no experience in life measuring what I do,” said Brennan, the public policy director of the Virginia-based Mothers at Home, a nonprofit organization that supports mothers who choose to stay home with their families.

Still others laugh at the whole idea.

“Nothing will happen. Who really wants to be the one to compensate them?” said Reuben Slesinger, a University of Pittsburgh economist who calculates the value of people’s lives in wrongful-death lawsuits. “With the cutbacks in government, I suspect they’re never going to get anything.”