Live-in maids

“Live-in Maids”
By: Tatiana Coba

“Let me relate to you my approach with my helpers: for a start they are eating by themselves in the `dirty' kitchen, not at our table where we can have guests or just want privacy in our conversation and don't want to be scrutinized while eating. They do eat the same food as us but we keep an eye on them to avoid be taken advantage of, by temptation, greedor pure ignorance. Things like dried fruits, cheeses, fresh milk, roasted nuts, alcohol, vitamins, Milo and milk powder and the likes for the child, are strictly out of bound for them and I made it clear from day one....They can rest of course during the day if tired watching their TV in their room, but no "siestas". Some days we are not busy so our maids can take it easy, but at other times we areand so they have to move their bums to keep up with the demand the occasion requires. We treat them kindly and in a friendly way, but let me repeat this: Our Domestic helpers are workers for our family and they are NOT family members” (advantages and disadvantages).
Being a maid has its advantages like having nice housing and food, and disadvantages like not having enough free time.Especially, this job has disadvantages if the employer is a person that would agree with the description of how a live-in maid must be handled stated above. The purpose of this essay is to challenge the middle high class women employers who are feminist, and to find out whether a feminist should or shouldn't hire a live-in maid bearing in mind feminism's statements. To achieve this, I will show an overviewof the origins of this occupation and the similarity with slavery. Besides, I will analyze the main points of this occupation that conflict with the feminist principles.
In order to understand better this occupation a review of it's roots in slavery must be done. In America the slaves arrived with the discovery in 1492. The conquerors required workers to explode the wealth of the new lands,but due to different facts, most of the natives died during the colonization. In North America almost every single native was assassinated and in south and central America, most of the natives died because of the sicknesses the Spanish brought to the continent. In consequence, the Europeans made that millions of slave's ships crossed the Atlantic with workers from Africa that were required to workin America (Funes). Among these workers were the maids, women who should keep the colonizers' houses shiny, take care of their children, cook, etc. Out of a total population of 29 million, an estimated one and a half million people worked as domestic servants in England and Wales during the period 1850 to 1914. Wages were very low in those days but boarding and lodging were usually provided.Schedule was tight and housemaids seldom socialized and eventually they were sexually abused by their “owners”. (A History of)
In the XVIII century, the slavery system began to crack because philosophers, abbots and religious people questioned this system; also the slaves rebelled and gained their liberty, as it happened in Haiti. Denmark was the first European country that prohibited slavery in 1792and Cuba was one of the last to abolish it, in 1880 (Funes). Finally, in 1926 the United Nations made a convention in which all countries declared themselves against the slavery. Off course, this didn't mean the nonexistence of slavery but its illegality (Convención sobre la esclavitud). Personally, I believe that the live-in maids job has not achieved to get rid of the inheritance of thecolonizers. This occupation has some remains of the enslavement such as the suppression of a private life, unfair salary and disparaging attitudes from the employers.
First, the suppression of a private life for the maids is due to the factor that their work place is also their living place. Hagneu's and Sotelo's article is very clear about this statement: they narrate how different live-in maids...