Domestic Work

Defining Domestic Work

Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo identifies three common types of domestic work positions in her study Doméstica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence. She includes (1) the live-in nanny/housekeeper, an employee who works for and lives with one family and is generally responsible for child care and caring for the household, (2) the live-out nanny/housekeeper, who works for one family full time but returns to own home at the end of the day and (3) the housecleaner, who cleans houses on a contractual basis often for several different employers. Scholars such as Mary Romero have argued that this last position provides greater flexibility and autonomy, shorter hours, and higher pay.

Only a few decades ago, many had predicted the occupation would become obsolete; however, at the beginning of the 21st century, the occupation and its demand are growing. Several factors have contributed to this growth, including greater income inequality, the large movement of middle- and upper-class women into the workforce, and mass immigration of women from poor nations to fill caring roles in wealthy nations. As Hondagneu-Sotelo points out, in areas where there is a greater income inequality, there are often greater concentrations of paid domestic work. Although some women have long worked in wage labor (often not having the class privilege to not work), recent decades have shown a large influx of class-privileged women into white-collar and professional sectors. This movement of upper- and middle-class women into the workforce creates a demand for others to pick up “caring labor” in the home.

Women's Work

In most parts of the world, domestic work is associated with women. In the colonial period of U.S. history, domestic work was mostly preformed by slaves or indentured workers. In the middle and southern colonies, large numbers of convicts and indentured workers from England held domestic service positions, as did free willers, Europeans who sold themselves into slavery for passage to the Americas. Native American and Black slaves and servants were also found in large numbers in New England and the South, respectively.

By the late 1700s, native-born free White labor replaced indentured labor in the North and Black enslaved workers replaced White servants in the South. In Judith Rollins's chronicling of this history, she argues that this period represents both the most egalitarian and dehumanizing period of the master-servant relationship—egalitarian in the North and dehumanizing in the South. Because workers in the North were wage laborers, often of the same ethnicity and religion as employers, they were perceived as being more socially equal. In the South, Black enslaved workers performed most domestic labor, making this relationship extremely dehumanizing, characterized by the violent exploitation of slavery. Following emancipation, these domestic slaves often assumed roles of low-wage workers and the relationship between employees and employers changed very little.

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