Red Rag Magazine, Feminist Economics and the Domestic Labour Pains of Liberation

Abstract

This article examines the domestic labour debate of the 1970s as it was mediated in the Marxist feminist magazine, Red Rag (1972–80). Red Rag’s visual representations of housework wittily demystified the bonds of ‘love’ that bound women to the everyday routines of domestic labour while its theoretical discussions offered alternative feminist perspectives to the New Home Economics, a neo-classical economic approach to the household as well as to Marxist economics that occluded women’s labour in its emphasis on production. Within the pages of the magazine, an emerging feminist economics developed that challenged the gendered production boundaries reinforcing the division of labour, graphically depicted intra-household conflict and exposed the ideological assumptions that rendered caring labour invisible. It was not only in terms of theory, however, that Red Rag contributed to these debates but also in terms of its collective practice. The process of making the magazine became the subject of editorials reflecting on how feminists worked together. Red Rag’s analysis of its own production processes illuminated the internal tensions within the collective but also pointed to some of the ‘contradictions’ within the WLM, contradictions that were bound up with the cultural capital attached to economic theory and the authority this conferred on the Red Rag collective.

Keywords:

• feminist economics
• periodicals
• Wages for Housework
• women’s liberation movement
• Red Rag
• domestic labour
• care

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Rosalind Delmar for generously sharing a draft of her introductory essay to the Red Rag digital archive, which is available at the Barry Amiel Melburn Trust Internet Archive in 2020, and for offering invaluable insights that informed the development of this argument.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Cathy Clay supports the view that Time and Tide lost none of its feminist fervour in the interwar period, if anything, it ‘grew in prestige and influence’ (Clay 2016: 410).

2 For an account of Malos’s perspective on WFH see Sisterhood and After: The Women’s Liberation Oral History Project <https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/ellen-malos-wages-for-housework>

3 Digitization was funded by the Barry Amiel and Norman Melburn Trust and the magazine is available at: http://banmarchive.org.uk/collections/redrag/index_frame.htm

4 I would like to thank Rosalind Delmar for generously sharing a draft of her introductory essay to the Red Rag digital archive which is available at the Barry Amiel Melburn Trust Internet Archive in 2020 and for offering invaluable insights that informed the development of this argument.

5 The composition of the Red Rag Collective changed frequently and included, among others: Sally Alexander, Sue Berger, Gladys Brooks, Sheila Brown, Beatrix Campbell, Gaby Charing, Val Charlton, Marion Dain, Daphne Davies, Rosalind Delmar, Mikki Doyle, Eva Eberhart, Margaret Edney, Alison Fell, Kerry Hamilton, Roberta Henderson, Adah Kay, Anna Livingston, Maria Loftus, Fran Mclean, Sheila McKechnie, Mandy Merck, Annie Mitchell, Annette Muir, Nell Myers, Sue O’Sullivan, Christine Peters, Ruth Petrie, Nettie Pollard, Linda Redford, Jean Radford, Sheila Rowbotham, Ann Scott, Lynne Segal, Barbara Taylor, Jackie Turner, Michelene Victor (neé Wandor), Angela Weir, Elizabeth Wilson, Sheila Young.

6 Communist Party of Great Britain Archives, Women’s Department, 1950–1992, Red Rag: A Magazine of Liberation, Microform Academic Publishers.

7 Thank you to Rosalind Delmar for sharing this insight through email correspondence.

8 Red Rag frequently used drawings by children to punctuate theoretical debate. For instance, Victor, 1974; Rachel, age 5, Red Rag 1973, 2: 11.

9 The Women’s Budget Group continues to show the disproportionate economic effects on women of Austerity and the more recent global pandemic. See https://wbg.org.uk Women’s Budget group.