The Kitchen Maid as Revolutionary Symbol: Paid Domestic Labour and the Emancipation of Soviet Women, 1917–1941

2017 ◽  
pp. 83-100
Author(s):  
Alissa Klots
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Labour ◽  
Paid Domestic Labour

Employing Migrant Domestic Workers in Urban Yemen: A New Form of Social Distinction

Hawwa ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 154-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina de Regt
Keyword(s):  
Social Stratification ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
Horn Of Africa ◽  
Social Distinction ◽  
Domestic Labour ◽  
New Form ◽  
Paid Domestic Labour ◽  
Middle Class Families ◽  
Migrant Domestic Workers

AbstractThis article argues that employing migrant domestic workers has become a new form of social distinction in urban Yemen. The rapid social, economic and political changes of the past forty years have altered Yemen's system of social stratification. Formerly, one's racial descent and economic background determined the work they performed. Manual and service professions had a very low status and were only performed by the lowest social status groups. Nowadays other forms of social distinction have emerged. Although the economic situation in Yemen has deteriorated since the 1990s, the demand for paid domestic labour has increased. Yemeni women are reluctant to take up paid work as domestics, and middle and upper middle class families in urban areas employ migrant and refugee women, in particular from the Horn of Africa.

scholarly journals The Fight for Land, Water and Dignity in Lindsey Collen’s The Malaria Man and Her Neighbour

2021 ◽  
pp. 63-77
Author(s):  
Felicity Hand ◽  
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Class Conflict ◽  
Agricultural Workers ◽  
Access To Water ◽  
Domestic Labour ◽  
Paid Domestic Labour ◽  
Land Water

The novels of South-African born Mauritian writer and activist Lindsey Collen expose a historical continuum of class exploitation, ranging from the slave past of the country including both pre-abolition African slavery together with indentured labour from the Indian subcontinent to post-independence sweat-shop toil, ill-paid domestic labour and exploited agricultural workers. Her latest novel to date, The Malaria Man and Her Neighbours (2010) probes this continuing class conflict and queries mainstream notions of heteronormativity. Access to water and land will be seen to lie behind the murder of the four main characters and the subsequent popular reaction. Collen insists that the underprivileged can become empowered through union, that participation and joint, communal effort can still make a difference.

Maid in the Market: Women's Paid Domestic Labour

1997 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 351
Author(s):  
Patricia M. Daenzer ◽  
Wenona Giles ◽  
Sedef Arat-Koc
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Labour ◽  
Paid Domestic Labour

Uncomfortable stains: Cleaning labour, class positioning and moral worth among working-class Chilean women

2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 847-865
Author(s):  
Valentina Álvarez-López
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Moral Worth ◽  
Mature Women ◽  
Self Worth ◽  
Domestic Labour ◽  
Working Class Women ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
A Site ◽  
Paid Domestic Labour

This article explores ethnographically the ways in which working-class elderly and mature women position themselves in class and gender terms through the cleaning practices they carry out in their own households. Following contemporary research, it understands domestic labour as a site of production and negotiation of classed, gendered and ‘raced’ subject positions. Scholars researching on paid domestic labour have emphasised cleaning labour as devalued; however, this article argues that the unpaid cleaning labour the women carry out in their own households might become a source of self-worth. It does so by briefly depicting how the twentieth-century Chilean modernisation and processes of class formation were coupled with an emphasis on hygiene and cleanliness. It also provides an ethnographic description of working-class women’s cleaning practices, attending to the classed and gendered meanings and value the women attach to these practices, and discussing their negotiation of expected standards in relation to material conditions and the multiple demands and values of everyday life. It shows that the margin of negotiation is much reduced when the results of cleaning practices are more open to public view. It also argues that the women not only express their subjectivities through everyday negotiations of cleaning standards, but also produce particular modes of being working-class women.

Macro-Level Determinants of Paid Domestic Labour Prevalence: A Cross-National Analysis of Seventy-Four Countries

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 385-405 ◽  
Author(s):  
Merita Jokela
Keyword(s):  
Income Inequality ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
Labour Markets ◽  
Female Employment ◽  
Macro Level ◽  
Ageing Population ◽  
Domestic Labour ◽  
National Analysis ◽  
Paid Domestic Labour

The growing demand for domestic workers has been linked to several global developments, such as an ageing population, income inequality, the growth of women entering labour markets, migration and changes in the provision of care. However, empirical quantitative evidence for these associations is still scarce. This study examines how macro-level factors related to care needs (female employment rates and proportion of aged population), labour markets (proportion of migrants and vulnerable employment) and economic characteristics (gross domestic product, income inequality and level of urbanisation) are associated with the prevalence of paid domestic labour across seventy-four countries. Data are derived from the statistics compiled by the International Labour Organization (ILO). Results show that a higher prevalence of paid domestic workers is particularly associated with greater income inequality, but also with a higher proportion of migrants. The association with income inequality remained unchanged after controlling for six other variables related to the demand and supply of domestic services. These findings suggest that income inequality is a crucial factor in determining the proportion of domestic workers in the labour force.

Portraits of Women’s Paid Domestic-Care Labour

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shalini Grover ◽  
Thomas Chambers ◽  
Patricia Jeffery
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Dynamics ◽  
Emotional Labour ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Domestic Labour ◽  
Care Economy ◽  
Complex Relationships ◽  
Paid Domestic Labour ◽  
Domestic Care

Our introduction to this Special Issue draws out themes from all four articles which focus on India’s domestic-care economy: women’s paid domestic labour, care work and surrogacy. Through fine-grained ethnographic detail, all the articles nuance questions around agency and resistance, and actively challenge the ‘passive victim’ stereotype that continues to be the primary imaginary in many representations of domestic-care workers. We describe how the articles detail the intimacy, emotional labour and complex spatial dynamics inherent within a sector that often involves working in the homes of others, caring for children, and complex relationships with employers. Additionally, we show how care workers encounter quotidian forms of bodily control, distancing, segregation, authority, stigma, coercion, punitive sanctions and exploitation embedded in the intersections of class, race, caste, gender and ethnicity. To provide a wider framing for the articles, we utilize this introduction to situate them within broader historical and geographical contexts. Thus, we consider how global care chains (GCCs), labour markets, migration, and colonial/postcolonial considerations interplay in shaping the everyday lives of domestic-care workers in contemporary globalizing India.

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