Sara Davin Omar/Confront
→ An Autonomous Form for the Labor of Love
Article for trans magazin, 2021
From a Marxist point of view, reproductive labor comprises all work that maintains life as cooking, cleaning and childcare. Feminist activist and scholar Silvia Federici coined the term “the labour of love” to emphasize that this is a labour that women have been expected to perform in order to showcase their love for their families and husbands, who in turn sustain capitalism as wage-labourers in factories. Despite the fact that capitalism is dependent on the well-being of its work-force, “the labor of love” has throughout history been taken for granted and explicitly made invisible, leaving women isolated in their kitchens. By stressing its crucial role within the capitalist system, Feminist movements such as the Wages for Housework group where Federici was active fought for acknowledgement of and the remuneration of housework in the 1970’s and onward.
In Social-Democratic Welfare-states of Western Europe as Sweden, Austria, Germany and the Netherlands, the assimilation of reproductive labor to the domestic realm was institutionalized through the construction of public housing projects during the 20th century. Even though these housing schemes did not question traditional gender roles of the division of labor, there are examples of reproductive labor being assigned a political visibility within the communal sphere. Canonical Karl Marx Hof in Vienna is an example of a public housing complex where this is visible, if analyzed through the methods of the Wages for Housework group. With their ascending forms, autonomous pavilions for kindergarten and laundry facilities were allowed to confront the semi-public realm of the immense courtyards. Through this perspective, the estate showcases a relation between reproductive labour and private units that has disappeared from the residential architecture of neoliberal society.