Five years in the making, with contributions from hundreds of women and over 200 Australian films, FOR LOVE OR MONEY is a unique, superbly crafted pictorial history of Australian women.
The film chronicles the cycles of women’s gains and losses as they are moved in and out of the workforce according to demands of the time. It reveals how women’s unpaid and voluntary work keeps an entire system running smoothly, in peacetime and in war. As wives and mothers, women do the work of loving – the work that is never paid or recognised as real work. The film shows how women’s work in the home determines the kinds of jobs they do in the paid workforce – the low-paid, low-status jobs.
FOR LOVE OR MONEY also shows how women have fought and organised for equality and wage justice for over a century. This classic documentary remains relevant today as women continue the unfinished campaigns for equal pay, maternity leave and childcare, and still carry the major responsibility for caring and nurturing.