Mariarosa Dalla Costa
Mariarosa Dalla Costa is an Italian autonomist feminist and co-author of the classic The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community, with Selma James. This text launched the "domestic labour debate" by re-defining housework as reproductive labor necessary to the functioning of capital, rendered invisible by its removal from the wage-relation.
A member of Lotta Femminista, Dalla Costa developed this analysis as an immanent critique of Italian Workerism.
She was a co-founder of the International Feminist Collective, an organisation formed in Padua in 1972 to promote political debate and action around the issue of housework that gave rise to the International Wages for Housework Campaign.Works
- The Power of Women & the Subversion of the Community ; Bristol: Falling Wall Press, 1972
- Women, Development, and Labor of Reproduction: Struggles and Movements ; Africa World Press, 1999
- Gynocide: Hysterectomy, Capitalist Patriarchy and the Medical Abuse of Women ; Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 2007
