Domestic Workers

The struggle of African American domestic workers can be better understood when using political theory in the context of political practice. Throughout this paper I plan on using this phenomenon as an example of current feminist political theories, such as gender, class, race, class-consciousness and the divide between the public and private spheres in an attempt to understand the role of feminist and female political involvement in the changing face of political activism and how the story of African American domestic workers relates to all these themes.

First off, how women see themselves within the arena of political activity needs to be explored. Examining the role of women in the political arena does not fully describe the political worlds of working class women (Morgen, 8). This is because there exists a gap between the definition of politics and the practice of politics. Politics is most commonly defined as the electoral political arena, which ultimately depoliticizes politics because “it prevents many citizens from recognizing that their concerns could be represented on the larger political agenda” (Ackelsberg, 298) making them believe that politics is an activity beyond their interests and concerns. Their discontent can be seen in the low number of voters that go to the polls every election. Our current political and economic system is set up in a way in which working class women cannot fully trust because it does not work towards their best interests. It works with the interests of the powerful and the wealthy, or the working classes’ employers (Morgen, 8).

In order to successfully place the practices and struggles of African American domestic workers in the larger context of their political activism, there needs to b...

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... their employment, class and the time era.

The women that called domestic work their career faced many contradictions in their lives that they had to make work: “work and family, personal and political, community and workplace” they make up the different spheres in which women must live their lives (Morgen, 13). African American domestic workers lived balanced the different spheres by keeping the employer’s private home their public sphere, balancing the gender roles of a laboring woman and their responsibility in the home, their unknown political activism and their role as domestic workers within their own Black communities. During their inclusion in all these spheres, African American domestic workers place themselves in the context of their activism within these spheres. They become live examples of political theory in the context of political practice.