Melusina Fay Peirce

Melusina Fay "Zina" Peirce, born Harriet Melusina Fay, was an American feminist, author, teacher, music critic, organizer and activist best known for spearheading the 19th-century "cooperative housekeeping" movement. Peirce believed that gender equality would only come with women's economic independence and "identified the cause of women's economic and intellectual oppression as unpaid, unspecialized domestic work." Her proposed solution to this oppression was "cooperative housekeeping," a system where women would do domestic chores together and profit by requesting payment from their husbands. An important component of her plan was the spatial reorganization of neighborhoods and homes to accommodate domestic cooperation between women.