I read Wages Against Housework by Silvia Federici, and found that it awakened in me, something that had been festering for some time. I’d been unhappy for a long time with the way I saw women treated in society but hadn’t really had a neat little box in which to compartmentalize the feeling. Wages against housework give me just that.

The document says that women have been sold a lie. Marriage and housekeeping as well as child-rearing, are presented as ideals that every woman intrinsically longs for. Society spreads the vibe that if you can’t get a man to like you enough to marry you, there’s something wrong with you. Women then go down to almost military tactics to capture the love of any available men and secure the engagement ring. The concept of being left in the trenches, unwanted and unloved, would signify the very failure of one’s female existence.

What a dramatic tale! The subtext is that men are few, and you should be honored to carry on the bloodline of any who deigns you fit to do so. You are the chattel that secures his lineage. You need to be “good” to earn your place in his household and through that, your place in society. You should be grateful to any man who allows you this honor. If he has a little money in the bank, then consider yourself the luckiest girl in the world! That he treats you worse than the family dog, is nothing to complain about.

This lie has been packaged in everything, from television sitcoms to fiery sermons at the pulpit. Everywhere you look this is what you’re told. If you look at your parent’s relationship, it might reflect this paradigm. How then are you to create the concept in your own mind that you are important? How would you know to poke your head out of time and realize that you don’t like that script. The tragedy of living for 40 years, only to realize that it was a fake and unwanted ideal! In any case, waking up at 40, is better than never waking up at all.

The insidious underlying teaching is that women are worth-less than men. Women are secondary citizens. The wave of familial disappointment encountered when the announcement comes out that the newborn baby is a girl, is in rife practise even today. Who shall be the heir of your great fortune? (Forget that there is no fortune). Who shall carry on your name? The women’s right to vote came ridiculously late. We don’t see that many women leaders whether it be in politics or in the corporate space. All these points, build up the story in the little girl’s mind that her value as a female is just naturally less than that of her pal Bill. No human being has a greater value than another. Gender and age have nothing to do with this. You, yes you reading this, are worth more than diamonds! You are worth more than the Cullinan Diamond! You are worth more than the most precious thing you can think of! Your worth is not dependent on your weight or your style or the amount of money you have in the bank. In fact, your worth has nothing to do with how you feel or who you think yourself to be. Your worth is an inalienable quality that exists whether or not you recognize it.

As a woman, you have the freedom to decide what you want. Women are the gatekeepers of marriage. In fact, women are the gatekeepers to humanity. You get to choose whose seed makes it into the next generation. You get to determine which lineage continues. In fact, you get to decide to discontinue your own lineage if you fancy. This is true power.

Selling the tale that marriage and housekeeping and child-rearing are the only proper place for a woman, (while creating the illusion that she herself has yearned for this since childhood!), negates a woman’s other options. It entrenches capitalism as the only viable economic structure. The woman must stay home, and the man must go out to earn a living. Men have no role in washing dishes or ensuring that their children are good at math — they are too busy for such menial tasks which are to be performed by the lower value women. Fast forward to the 21st-century, and even though the woman must now also go out to earn a living, to enable double income households (because = capitalism), that doesn’t take away from her homely duties. That’s her task. This woman is overworked, harassed, tired and unhappy, and her children feel it.

Well, this need not be. We need to relook at what makes us do what we do. Question the habits we think are innate. Get a little selfish and figure out what we, as women actually want to do. If the above is the path of your choosing, that is great! There are structures in place that can lighten the load a little bit, including getting the man more involved. If you want to explore a different path, great! Go yea forth onto the path less trodden, without a worry of what others might say!