Melusina Fay Peirce

Melusina Fay "Zina" Peirce (February 24, 1836 – April 28, 1923), born Harriet Melusina Fay in Burlington, Vermont, 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.

In 1869, Peirce created the Cambridge Cooperative Housekeeping Association. In addition, she was active in the Boston Woman's Education Association and the Cambridge Woman's Union and promoted the founding of Radcliffe College. Peirce was also the president of the Women's Parliament's first convention, which met in New York in 1869.

She championed causes besides feminism, such as street cleaning and historic preservation, leading initiatives to address these issues. In 1887–1888, she organized the street cleaning committee of the Ladies' Health Protective Association of New York, and in 1900–1901, she organized the Women's Auxiliary to the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society. Peirce also spearheaded "the New York Women's World Fair committee [in] 1876; the New York women's movement for cheap summer-night concerts [in] 1895; [and] the New York movement to save the Poe cottage [in] 1896; and Fraunces Tavern [in] 1897". In 1898–1899, she organized the Women's Philharmonic Society of New York.

As a nativist, Peirce was a vocal opponent of increased immigration to the United States and expressed animosity against Irish-Americans.

Her writings appear in the Atlantic Monthly, the Boston Post, and the Chicago Evening Journal. She wrote Cooperative Housekeeping: How not to do it, and How to do it: A Study in Sociology (1884), Cooperative Housekeeping (1889), and New York, A Symphonic Study. She also edited Music-Study in Germany (1881), written by her sister Amy Fay.