Epilogue

This epilogue looks at several new factors affecting domestic employment in Ecuador today which may change the landscape for workers, employers, and activists. First is the new government. If before, there was worker-friendly rhetoric and praise for humble domestic workers, but little concrete improvement in policies and conditions, today even the rhetoric is gone. The best way to reach and make claims on the new government is still unclear, and it will be difficult to obtain state funding for domestic worker initiatives. Second, there has been a “rupture” in the domestic worker organization Asociación de Trabajadoras Remuneradas del Hogar (ATRH). This situation makes organizing and advocating for domestic workers more difficult and may lead to confusion among policy makers and funders. Third, there has been an uptick in migration to Ecuador from Colombia and Venezuela, as people flee violence, political instability, and economic disaster. Finally, some of the people interviewed in 2018 claim to be witnessing growth in the proportion of live-in, full-time domestic workers. Despite changes in the context of domestic employment, however, workers' status has not changed much since this study began. Social reproduction is still devalued, informal arrangements still prevail, and the class gulf between employers and domestic workers remains.

Embodied Inequality

This chapter examines the role of bodies and embodiment in domestic work. It argues that bodies matter for how domestic employees experience their work. Indeed, domestic workers' accounts emphasized physical labor and the embodied inequality between employer and employee. They described their work as exhausting, accelerating the deterioration of their bodies, and potentially dangerous. These accounts conceive of the body as a limited resource that women draw on to do their work, a resource that can be used up or damaged in the process. Bodies also matter because of the symbolic distinctions drawn between “good,” middle-class/elite bodies and “bad,” lower-class/deviant bodies—between employers' and workers' bodies. Workers face clear boundaries between themselves and employers in relation to health, food consumption, and appearance. Even employers who buck tradition by pursuing more egalitarian relations are aware of the differential values typically placed on differently classed bodies in Ecuador.