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‘IN WHOSE INTERESTS ARE WE FIGHTING?’ WHAT HISTORIAN PREMILLA
NADASEN LEARNED ABOUT ECONOMIC JUSTICE FROM THE DOMESTIC WORKERS’
RIGHTS MOVEMENT  
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Carmen Rios interviews Premilla Nadasen
August 10, 2025
Ms. Magazine
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_ “We, as feminists today, like domestic workers in the 1970s and
in the early 2000s, need to think outside the box...We can’t think
about domestic work as an individual issue within the household, but
as a structural problem....” _

“We can’t think about domestic work as an individual issue within
the household, but as a structural problem,” Nadasen told Ms.,
“and try to come up with collective, rather than individualized,
privatized solutions.” , Photo: Matt Harvey / Ms. Magazine

 

Premilla Nadasen, history professor at Barnard College and author of,
among other books, _Household Workers Unite: The Untold Story of
African American Women Who Built a Movement
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much of her scholarship at the intersections of feminist meaning,
labor organizing, and visions of social change driven by poor and
working-class women. 

Outside of the academy, Nadasen has also testified before the
Department of Labor and the New York State Assembly Committee on
Labor, collaborated with the nonprofit organizations on projects
amplifying the history of women workers of color, and written
extensively on issues of race, class, and gender for newspapers and
magazines—including _Ms. _Nadasen’s piece in the Fall 2009
issue, “Domestic Workers Take it to the Streets,” is just one part
of her larger body of work
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domestic workers’ rights movement for _Ms_.

As part of the third episode of the Ms. Studios podcast _Looking
Back, Moving Forward
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talked to Nadasen about the lessons she pulled from the
then-burgeoning contemporary fight for domestic workers’ rights
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can be a compass for the fight forward for economic equality, and the
questions we need to ask as we move forward in order to make sure no
one is left behind.
 
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To Listen, Click here
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Nadasen is joined in this episode by labor icon DOLORES HUERTA
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Springboard to Opportunities founding CEO AISHA NYANDORO
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National Women’s Law Center vice president for education and
workplace justice GAYLYNN BURROUGHS
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and economists RAKEEN MABUD and LENORE PALLADINO. 

Together, we traced 50-plus years of feminist resistance to workplace
discrimination, women’s disproportionate unpaid domestic and care
burdens, and the sociopolitical factors that push women, in larger
numbers, into poverty—revealing both how the system seeks to devalue
all of “women’s work,” and what we can do about it.
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_This interview has been edited and re-organized for clarity and
length._

_CARMEN RIOS_: WHAT LED YOU TO WRITING YOUR PIECE ON _MS_. FOR THE
ORGANIZING THAT DOMESTIC WORKERS WERE DOING? 

PREMILLA NADASEN: I’m a historian—I’m a labor historian, I’m
a women’s historian, I’m a historian of race—so I was reading a
lot about the labor movement in the early 2000s, and a lot of what I
was reading was about how the labor movement had died, there was no
vibrant labor movement, union membership was at the lowest level
it’s been in 100 years. Policymakers were saying this, journalists
were saying this. Historians were saying this. 

At the same time, I was involved in the domestic worker rights
movement. I was attending demonstrations in Downtown Manhattan, I was
attending meetings in Brooklyn, and there was a real disconnect there
between what the experts were telling us and what I was witnessing in
the streets. 

I was really intrigued by this massive multiracial movement of women
of all ages who were coming together, who were demanding labor rights,
who were demanding fair treatment, who were demanding better working
conditions. I felt like this was a movement that really needed to be
uplifted, and that’s why I started writing about this movement.

I started meeting the women who were leading this movement; I was
deeply impressed. It also led me to write my book about domestic
worker organizing, which was inspired, in large part, by the
organizing I was witnessing around me.

We can’t think about domestic work as an individual issue within the
household, but as a structural problem—and try to come up with
collective, rather than individualized, privatized solutions.
-Premilla Nadasen

_RIOS_: WHAT WAS THE IMPACT OF THE PIECE? 

NADASEN: _Ms._ is the preeminent feminist magazine, and it had a
huge impact, both in bringing the work that domestic workers were
doing to a broader public audience and raising this question—of
organizing, and how we understand feminist organizing in a much
broader way—to a larger feminist movement. 

Domestic workers have long argued that domestic labor is a feminist
issue. It is an issue that unites us all, regardless of class, race,
legal status, or ethnic background. It is, historically, women’s
work, whether it’s paid or unpaid, and women have, generally,
carried the burden of doing or ensuring that domestic work gets done.
That, of course, does not mean that there aren’t differences or
tensions or even oppositional interests within domestic work, because
we know that wealthy women tend to hire poorer women to do this work.
In fact, in the 1970s and ‘80s, many middle-class women went into
the workforce for the first time, and they hired poorer women, often
women of color, to take care of their household responsibilities.
Their very feminist liberation was dependent upon the exploitation of
other women. 

Even though there is this tension, this contradiction, we can’t
think about domestic work as an individual issue within the household,
but as a structural problem and try to come up with collective, rather
than individualized, privatized solutions. That’s where
understanding and seeing domestic work in this way can usher us in a
whole different direction.

_RIOS_: IN YOUR ARTICLE, YOU HIGHLIGHT THE WAYS THAT RACISM AND SEXISM
ARE NOT JUST PERPETUATED BY THE NATURE OF CAPITALISM OR BY
CORPORATIONS; THEY’VE ALSO BEEN PERPETUATED, HISTORICALLY, BY
LIBERAL ECONOMIC POLICIES AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE ORGANIZATIONS LIKE
UNIONS. WHEN WE THINK ABOUT THE FEMINIST ECONOMIC FUTURE, HOW CAN
FEMINISTS BE SURE THAT WE’RE THINKING ABOUT ALL WOMEN, THAT WE ARE
IMAGINING A SOCIETY THAT TRANSCENDS CLASS AND, LIKE YOU SAID, SOLVES
THE ROOT PROBLEM HERE OF THE UNPAID AND UNDERPAID NOTION OF DOMESTIC
LABOR?

NADASEN: For me, that always begins with the least powerful and with
the most vulnerable among us. The Combahee River Collective, a group
of radical Black feminists in the Boston area, wrote more than 50
years ago
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by liberating people who, simultaneously experience sexism, racism,
heterosexism, capitalist exploitation, and imperialism, we will free
everyone, because freeing them means dismantling all those structures
of power. 

As contemporary feminists, we have to continually ask: In whose
interests are we fighting? Who will benefit from the work that I’m
doing right now? Who should we put at the center of our organizing
campaigns? If we do that, we are constantly asking the question or
trying to address the tensions that naturally exist among this very
broad category that we call feminists or that we call women.

Feminism is a political agenda that centers women, that centers race,
that centers class—but it is an agenda around which anyone, of
whatever identity, can unite.
-Premilla Nadasen

_RIOS_: WE HAVE SEEN SOME PROGRESS FOR DOMESTIC WORKERS—12 STATES
HAVE PASSED DOMESTIC WORKERS’ BILLS OF RIGHTS, WHICH WAS THE
CENTERPIECE OF THE ORGANIZING
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THE WOMEN YOU WERE TALKING TO WERE DOING. HOW DO YOU FEEL LAWS LIKE
THOSE CAN SHIFT WOMEN’S REAL, LIVED ECONOMIC EXPERIENCES? HOW DO
THEY RESHAPE THE ECONOMIC STRUCTURES WE LIVE IN?

NADASEN: It’s an extremely important step forward. If you remember,
domestic workers were excluded from the basic labor laws of the 1930s,
from the New Deal legislation. They were excluded from minimum wage
protections. They were excluded from social security. To get to a
point where we now understand and we recognize that domestic work is
work and domestic workers deserve rights is a really important
milestone, and it indicates how domestic work has become more visible
to all of us.
 

We also recognized this during the pandemic when there was an absence
of domestic workers and other essential workers, which led to a real
care crisis
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But, we still have a long way to go. These laws are important, but we
need to ensure that people are aware of them. Even more importantly,
we need to ensure that there’s an enforcement mechanism, and we know
the Department of Labor, right now, is having challenges. It’s
wonderful to have laws on the books, but how do we make sure that
those laws are enforced? That’s the most important challenge before
us right now.

RIOS: YOUR PIECE REALLY FOCUSED ON THIS VARIETY OF TACTICS THAT THE
DOMESTIC WORKERS UNITED WAS LEVERAGING TO ADVANCE INDIVIDUAL AND
COLLECTIVE JUSTICE FOR DOMESTIC WORKERS IN NEW YORK. WHAT DO YOU THINK
FEMINISTS SHOULD TAKE AWAY FROM THEIR ORGANIZING? WHAT CAN WE LEARN
FROM THE STRATEGIES THAT THEY UTILIZED?

NADASEN: Part of what drew me to the domestic worker rights movement
in the early 2000s was, of course, the absence of their organizing in
the broader political discussion. But it was also the tactics that
they used, which were very innovative. We have this kind of standard
model of labor organizing, where workers on an assembly line come
together in their breakroom and picket outside the factory and meet in
smoky, dark rooms somewhere. What I saw was something very
different. 

Domestic workers were organizing in public places. They were
organizing on playgrounds. They were organizing in laundry rooms. They
were organizing on buses. They were organizing outside of their places
of work because they couldn’t organize in their place of work. They
were single employees in a household behind closed doors. They
organized, both documented and undocumented workers, and that might
seem commonplace to us now, but 25 years ago, the labor movement was
still struggling a lot with how to deal with the differences between
documented and undocumented workers. 

They weren’t only organizing people by employer—they directed
their demands to the state, which was extremely important, because it
meant that even if you changed employers, you would still get the
protections you deserve. Whereas now, if you work for Ford, for
example, and you switch to a different company, you might not get the
same benefits you got before. To begin to think about how workers
could be protected outside of their individual employer, but by
broader state-based legislation, was also very important. 

I was really intrigued by this massive multiracial movement of women
of all ages who were coming together, who were demanding labor rights,
who were demanding fair treatment, who were demanding better working
conditions.
-Premilla Nadasen

The takeaway here for me about this innovative organizing is that we,
as feminists today, like domestic workers in the 1970s and in the
early 2000s, need to think outside the box. There are tried and true
strategies that feminists have used for generations, an extremely
important part of our history, but as you mentioned, this is a
different moment. We’re in very turbulent times where all the rules
seem to be thrown out the window.

We have to think long and hard about how to meet this new moment. We
need to grapple with and think about how we understand feminism right
now. Is feminism about individual advancement? What does individual
advancement mean in a moment where so many people are being
marginalized, deported, having basic benefits cut for them, being
denied the right to even bring legal cases on  in terms of their own
protection? Is individual advancement the way to go, or do we have to
think about some kind of collective liberation for everyone? Not only
for women, but for everyone. 

I don’t know that I have answers for everything right now. We’re
all still trying to process what’s happening, but as with domestic
workers, who were excluded from the right to organize as a labor
union, historically, we could use this really difficult moment to
think much more expansively and really think in new and different ways
about how to organize a feminist movement. 

_RIOS_: WHEN YOU TALK ABOUT RETHINKING HOW WE ARE APPROACHING THIS
MOMENT, WHAT DO YOU HOPE, IN 50 YEARS, WE’RE LOOKING BACK ON? WHAT
ARE THE CHANGES THAT YOU HOPE TO COME, NOT JUST FROM THIS MOMENT BUT
OVER THE NEXT HALF OF THIS CENTURY?

NADASEN: We have to think about how to organize outside of social
media. We have to think about building community, and how we define
that community has to be broad-based. 

Right now, our public sector’s being eviscerated. Even basic rights
and protections that we have taken for granted are being dismantled.
Reproductive justice, basic economic support, healthcare and the right
to protection from violence are all in jeopardy. And at the same time,
people are being rounded up and deported and put in prisons in other
countries. U.S. citizens or people who are here who are not given due
process, there are assumptions that they’re here illegally. But
there’s no evidence of that, because they aren’t even given the
right to a hearing. And then we have genocide unfolding all around
the world, most especially in Gaza right now
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We could use this really difficult moment to think much more
expansively and really think in new and different ways about how to
organize a feminist movement. 
-Premilla Nadasen

I would love to have us think about how women can unite—I should say
feminists can unite, because it’s not a women’s issue. We have to
distinguish what we would call a woman’s issue from a feminist
issue, and for me, feminism is a political agenda that centers women,
that centers race, that centers class, but it is an agenda around
which anyone, of whatever identity, can unite.

I’d love to think about how to construct a feminist radical agenda
that moves us away from a neoliberal corporatized society, that moves
us away from capitalist exploitation and extraction
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that moves us away from punitive carcerality
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that moves us away from more militarization
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a truly caring society where everyone, and not just people in this
country, but also the bombs and the arms that we’re using to kill
people elsewhere, where everyone has the support that they need.

I’m so grateful that you’re doing this project, and I’m grateful
to_ Ms._ for its very long 50-plus-year history of uplifting the
feminist movement. Again, at a moment when history is being erased,
when voices that are just simply attempting to uplift the work that
has happened in the past that helps us understand the present moment
is being erased, it’s more important than ever that we turn to
history, that we turn to feminist organizing, we turn to anti-racism
organizing as a way to help us chart our new path forward.

_[CARMEN RIOS is a feminist superstar. She's a consulting editor and
the former managing digital editor at Ms. and the host of Looking
Back, Moving Forward, a five-part series from Ms. Studios. Carmen's
writing on queerness, gender, race and class has been published by
outlets including BuzzFeed, Bitch, Bust, CityLab, DAME, Feminist
Formations, GirlBoss, MEL, Mic, the National Women’s History
Museum, SIGNS and the Women’s Media Center, and she was a co-founder
of Webby-nominated Argot Magazine. @carmenriosss
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