74 SOCIAL SCIENTIST fact that if the wife's labour is partially unpaid for, it is also partially paid because wages include the cost of maintenance of the domestic unit which maintains and reporduces the worker. To say that separate wages should be paid for housework contains an implicit acceptance of the capitalist system because it assumes that wages are full payment for labour and that the wife's work is unpaid work as opposed to the husband's. It tries to isolate that which is an inseparable part of the exploitation of the domestic unit as a whole. This indirect exploitation of the housewife by the capitalist cannot be ended if she is paid for her housework, it can only come through the struggle for better wages and right to work for men and women alike, leading ultimately to the destruction of the wage labour system. As Davis points out, wages for housework ultimately rests on the sexist position that housework is the wife's proper domain. Her example of 'paid' housework involving black or immigrant domestic workers is particularly telling. It shows that direct payment for housework to the worker's wife from the employer does not spell freedom for the former, any more than it does for the 'paid' domestic worker. This cannot be achieved without the socialisation of housework, which in its turn assumes a change in the economy as a whole. As a female member of an oppressed minority, Davis presents the problems of feminism from a rather unusual perspective. But what is most refreshing about the book is her critical open-mindedness, her refusal to succumb to any kind of 'minority complex' either as a woman or as a member of the black community. Particularly, the question of hegemonic rule, based on race and class factors, within the feminist movement is introduced in her study with candour and courage. This is what makes it compulsory reading for all believers in sexual equality. Davis' work has a special signficance for Third World countries, Today, in many of the advanced capitalist countries with a substantial coloured population women's movements are splitting from seam to seam as a result of separatism between black and white 'sisters'. This does not mean that there is no common platfrom on which black and white women cannot stand together, but that to make this possible the feminist movement must make itself a part of the broad democratic struggle going on within a particular country. In our country, we may take this failure of Western Feminism as a signal for raising the demand of a specific solidarity of 'Third World women3. But the elimination of racial hegemony, or the hegemony of the 'developed' over the 'underdeveloped' does not necessarily mean the simultaneous elimination of upper class hegemony. This is only possible when the women's movement within a country proceeds in coordination with trade union movements and peasant movements, which are the most advanced forms of democratic struggle. In our country, we hardly have the tradition of a separate movement of women on women's issues. Thes^ issues had an incidental