Silvia Federici on refusal, care work and choice

Image by Hannah Matthews.

Interview • Verónica Gago & Silvia Federici • March 24, 2023 • Leer en castellano

Just a few weeks after over 7,000 nurses successfully struck for improved labor conditions in two New York City hospitals in January, researcher and activist Verónica Gago sat down for a conversation with Silvia Federici. They discussed women’s labor and reproductive labor, the pitfalls of labeling women’s work ‘care work,’ and the need for non-punitive strategies for justice within the feminist movement. 

This is the second part of their conversation. Read part one here.

Verónica Gago: I think we can say that one of the main issues in these years in the movement is the question of labor, and especially reproductive labor, which was made possible through the collective practice of the feminist strike. You mentioned the recent nurses’ strike in New York City, and their victory! 

There is also a debate emerging around the word ‘care.’ Can you explain a little bit more what this means, and what you think about the issue of labor as a part of the feminist movement? 

Silvia Federici: The struggle of the nurses has been iconic. It is especially important because it is a struggle over the terrain of reproduction, which traditionally has been seen by the revolutionary movement as a terrain on which you cannot build anti-capitalist power.

This struggle has encountered major obstacles, because of the blackmail that has been exercised against nurses, which is also the blackmail used against all women working in the home. Blackmail that consists of the idea that if you withdraw your labor, you're going to hurt the people closest to you or do damage to the people in your care.

This has been a really powerful tool to suffocate the struggle of women in the home, and of nurses in hospitals. And the nurses have been able to break with this, they have refused to be blackmailed. They have stopped work and demanded better conditions for themselves.

By increasing the hours of work and cutting compensation, employers have produced a situation in which a whole workforce is exhausted, and more likely not to be able to provide the services that are needed. 

Demystifying this is part of the work that we tried to do in wages for housework. The work women do is beneficial primarily to employers. Refusing to do that work and refusing the conditions that are imposed on us is a way of limiting the reproduction of people as exploitable workers. 

I want to add that the struggle of the nurses is not the only struggle. Internationally we have seen for years now, in particular in Spain, the building of the domestic workers movement. This is an international movement that is now becoming really organized.

Many of the women are immigrants, and they are fighting in conditions that are especially precarious. For those who are living-in with a family, their freedom is really limited and there is endless exploitation. Even so, their movements are expanding and have led to changes in international law, like the famous International Labor Organization’s Convention 189, that basically says domestic workers have the right to the same benefit as every other worker, which is a regular work day with a pension, vacations, and so on. 

This is a workforce of women who are being exploited, and yet they have been able to build a movement and turn the very element of their exploitation into power.

We still need, I think, a better analysis of the genealogy of the concept of care work. 

It's a concept that I know we never used in the 70s. Many domestic workers organizations have used it, and they've used it to show that the work the domestic workers are doing—particularly with children—is not just physical labor but has broader implications.

There's been a debate about this, one of the most important in the United States is Black feminist Premilla Nadasen, who has written a critique of the concept of care work. She argues that using the term care work in relation to the work of domestic workers detracts from the importance of women's labor rights. 

There is an appeal for them to have rights, to not be so exploited because they are doing care work, not because they are workers and they have workers' rights. 

She's saying first that ‘care’ detracts from the recognition of their labor rights and second, that it places a new burden on women workers. It is not enough that these women do the work, it is also expected that they do this work with a particular emotional disposition. 

Nadasen's arguing that this is really a misuse of the concept of care, and that we have to be very careful in using that term. She has done a lot of work on the history of domestic workers in the United States, particularly Black domestic workers. Speaking of them as doing care work is to say okay, these are women who will be recognized only because they have an emotional attachment to the people they work for. 

I think in the post-Covid world, the crisis of women doing reproductive work both at home and in institutions—like the nurses who risk their lives at work—became more visible. 

Now many of them are going on strike because they are disgusted with what they have seen and how they've been treated, and how the people in the hospital were treated.

VG: Another central issue is the question of justice and reproductive justice. It’s important to address the issue of backlash against feminism and how it is related to the idea of punitivism. How can the demands of justice from the feminist movement avoid furthering the expansion of punishment-based ‘solutions’? 

SF: The question of reproductive justice is really, really important. 

In the United States, the Supreme Court has eliminated Roe v. Wade, but this is the last act in a long, long, long process that has so many elements, so many episodes, and so many stages. 

The assassination of doctors providing abortion, the introduction—in state after state—of legislation to limit the right to abortion. Even before the Supreme Court intervened, in many places abortion was already non-existent. A movement was created that has persecuted women seeking abortion, with people going to the door of clinics chanting ‘murder murder murder.’

The issue of abortion in the history of capitalism is connected with the question of the construction of the labor force. The state claims the right to control the procreation process, so as to force women to reproduce and to guarantee an adequate number of workers.

In more recent years we have also seen another side of this. Today we have an international capitalist class which has at its disposal many more workers then for example in the 16th century, because of the fact that so many have been expelled from their lands, spurring massive movements of migration. 

Today the availability of labor power is much broader. And so we see also the other function of abortion and state control of procreation of women's bodies, women's behavior, which has to do with the question of sexual dissidence.

Denying abortion implies disciplining women's bodies and sexuality. It's a power that is given to men. Men become police over the bodies of women.

We cannot fight effectively for abortion unless we also fight for women's right to have children.

In the United States, we have seen that as powerful as the denial of abortion has been the denial of maternity, especially to Black women, who from slavery to the present really have been denied maternity. For a Black woman today, especially poor Black women, becoming pregnant is a risk. There is an immediate risk of being arrested, incarcerated and persecuted. 

A system of surveillance has been created that connects hospitals, doctors, and nurses with the police, and so that if anything appears not normal, during the medical procedure that a woman goes through once she's pregnant, she is immediately at risk of being criminalized.

Many states have passed legislation known as fetal protection laws. Some have gone to the extreme of saying that from the moment you are pregnant you can deduct the pregnancy from your taxes. 

It is very important to avoid falling into the position of some women in the 70s, when feminists thoughtlessly declared the right to abortion as the right to choice. We need choice in the field of reproduction. Choice means to be able to have children and to be able not to have them. Real control of our bodies is the possibility of both.

On the question of punitivism, I think this is another major issue in the women's movement.

During the first phase of feminism in the US, the response to violence against women was to demand more severe penalties [for abusers]. It has become more and more clear that severe penalties are always used against people who are already vulnerable: Black people, immigrants, and people already overexposed to incarceration and police brutality. 

Moving away from punitivism is a major development spearheaded by Black women, who experienced first hand the effect of punitive policies in their communities. Black women have understood all along what the police do and what the so-called justice system does. Now that consciousness is expanding, thanks to the work Black feminists have done.

We now have an abolitionist movement, a feminist abolitionist movement, that is fighting for the abolition of jails and prison and for the abolition of the police. I think the next task is the construction of alternatives, the construction of community based forms of justice.