"The institution of paid domestic labour produces cleanliness, meals and childcare, but it also produces and reproduces an unequal home and society."
The Help, a film about the relationship between African American maids and their employers in 1960s Mississippi, and the book on which it is based, is well-meaning, but both patronising and sentimental, while ignoring the inequality between employers and domestic workers in the U.S. today. The Hindu : Opinion / Op-Ed : The everyday embrace of inequality.
It also raises some important issues for those of us who live in servant-keeping societies. It is a reminder of the peculiar nature of inequality in the intimate environment of the home.
Because of the long history of servant employment in India, we often do not reflect upon the institution. We simply assume that we cannot live a middle-class existence without it. But we would do well to reflect on the effect of the institution of paid domestic work on the internal dynamics of middle-class families. The article the focuses on the morale and the ideology that is inculcated in the children seeing a paid domestic help in their home performing certain duties, and the effect that it has on the society at large.
The maintenance of the institution of paid domestic work, leads to the reproduction of hierarchies, even in the 21st century in very many societies, and stands in the way of any move towards a genuinely egalitarian one. Indeed, it produces what we have called a culture of servitude through which relations of domination, dependency, and hierarchy are normalised.
It also raises some important issues for those of us who live in servant-keeping societies. It is a reminder of the peculiar nature of inequality in the intimate environment of the home.
Because of the long history of servant employment in India, we often do not reflect upon the institution. We simply assume that we cannot live a middle-class existence without it. But we would do well to reflect on the effect of the institution of paid domestic work on the internal dynamics of middle-class families. The article the focuses on the morale and the ideology that is inculcated in the children seeing a paid domestic help in their home performing certain duties, and the effect that it has on the society at large.
The maintenance of the institution of paid domestic work, leads to the reproduction of hierarchies, even in the 21st century in very many societies, and stands in the way of any move towards a genuinely egalitarian one. Indeed, it produces what we have called a culture of servitude through which relations of domination, dependency, and hierarchy are normalised.
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