Domestic Workers in Latin America

"Every women gets the servants that she deserves"  Clarice Lispector's sister

"The maid is hanging out the washing on the clothes-line, still humming that tune without words. The melody pervades me.  The maid is dark and skinny, and lodged inside her is an 'I'.  A body separate from other bodies, and that is called an 'I'?  It is strange to have a body in which to lodge, a body where liquefied blood flows incessantly, where the mouth can sing, and the eyes must have wept so often.  She is an 'I'."  Clarice Lispector

A domestic worker is defined as a person who perform services for an individual or a family in the setting of a private home.  The person can be either a live-in domestic who actually lives in the household, or a day worker who comes during certain hours but maintains a separate residence.  The domestic worker is paid in money and/or payment in kind in the form of food and lodging.

In economic analyses, the domestic worker is usually not accorded much attention.  There are many reasons for this state:

1. First of all, there is a bias against household work.  After all, if someone in the household performs these chores themselves, then this work is not considered productive in the sense of being measured and reflected in the gross national product.  So if someone else is paid to perform the household chores, then it should not all of a sudden become productive work.  
    
2. Even if one wishes to give due consideration to the role of household work in the economy, there is lack of consensus about the measurement techniques.  For householders, it is difficult to determine the total amount of work, either in hours or effort.  As the saying goes, being a household wife is a full-time job without any respite (and without remuneration!).  For domestic workers, the measurement is complicated by the presence of payment in kind as well as the lack of formal data collection systems.
    
3. The typical profile of the domestic worker is a woman who is poor, minimally educated and having recently arrived in a big city from a rural province.  This domestic worker is then the subject of racial stereotyping, and called names like muchachas or cholitas.  As such, they are regarded as otherwise unemployable in an economy where unemployment and underemployment are rampant, and therefore the domestic work that they perform is simply treated as 'make' work.
    
4. Domestic workers work alone and do not have a central workplace.  They have no social security, pension, health or medical benefits.  They are usually not represented by any trade union.  As such, they form an occupational sector without a voice.

According to the Los Medios y Mercados de Latinoamérica 1998 study, 5.9% of households in Latin America have one or more live-in domestic workers, and 9.0% have one or more day domestic workers.  The following table shows the incidences of having domestic workers within different demographic classes of households.

(Source: Los Medios y Mercados de Latinoamérica 1998)

The likelihood of having domestic workers is an increasing function of socio-economic level.  We note that our definition of socio-economic level includes the presence of domestic workers as a small component.  But the education of the head of household and the annual household income hold strong positive correlations on their own.  The interesting nugget in this table is the relationship between the number of persons in the household and the presence of domestic workers --- the most likely family configuration with a live-in domestic worker is when both adults have full-time jobs, presumably paying well enough to hire someone to perform the household work. 

One of the greatest change agents to household work in contemporary society is the introduction of technology into homes.  As people begin to value time and convenience over money, appliances such as clothes washing machines and dish washing machines permit them to perform household chores quickly and effectively.  No longer was it necessary to haul your soiled clothing to wash by the river, because you can throw them all into the washing machine, pour some detergent in, push a button and walk away.

The following table shows the incidence of domestic workers among households which own various types of appliances:

(Source: Los Medios y Mercados de Latinoamérica 1998)

If you postulate that the presence of technology would lower the need for employing domestic worker, then you are wrong.  In every category, households that own labor-saving technology are more likely to have domestic workers.  For example, in the composite high-technology segment, the percent of households with domestic workers is more than twice as the general population.  

The analysis and interpretation of the information above table are confounded by the fact that household economic power needs to be considered.  A household which can afford to buy fancy gadgets is more likely to be able to afford to hire domestic workers.  For example, within households that have annual income US$24,000 or higher, domestic workers are present in 16% of households that own clothes washers versus 22% of households that do not own clothes washers.  And even household income does not tell the whole story, as the analysis also depends on the relative wages earned by domestic workers.  For example, in some countries, an uneducated and unskilled female teenager just arriving from a rural province may be paid next to nothing as a live-in domestic worker.  Karen Giffen observed in the paper "A mulher na reprodução da força de trabalho: Serviço doméstico pago como estratégia familiar de sobreviencia":

With respect to the redistribution of income represented by domestic service, it is useful to compare the situation of upper-class professional women in the U.S. and in Salvador (Bahia-Brasil).  For North American women with relatively high incomes: "The expenses associated with having two careers, such as paying a private child-care service, are very high ... In some cases, or at some points of her career, the wife now has to pay for the privilige of working in the market."

Research on female doctors, lawyers, engineers and architects in Salvador, on the other hand, showed the total cost of engaging a live-in domestic empleada was equivalent to, on average, 10 percent of the patrona's salary.

BOOK REFERENCES

• Christine E. Bose and Edna Acosta-Bélen (ed) (1995)  Women in the Latin American Development Process.  Temple University Press: Philadelphia, PA, USA
• Elsa Chaney and Mary Garcia Castro (eds) (1989)  Muchachas No More: Household Workers in Latin America and the Caribbean.  Temple University Press: Philadelphia, PA, USA
• Grace Chang.  Disposable Domestics: Immigrant Women Workers in the Global Economy.  South End Press.
• Clarice Lispector (1996)  Selected Crónicas.  New Directions Paperback: New York City, USA

(posted by Roland Soong on 5/05/00)

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