Why do females migrate to work as maids?
In general woman will migrate to work as domestic workers for one of three reason. (i) limited or no jobs in their country of origin (ii) the income in there country of origin is not enough to sustain there family; and (iii) to get away from a volatile family situation. Women see working as a maid in another country as way to solve these problems and ways to support there families back home. However the question has arisen once these women from lesser developed nations arrive in the rich developed nations does working as a ‘maid’ offer greater independence or does it just lead to more oppression and exploitation? This essay will demonstrate using the United Sates of America and the United Arab Emirates as a case study,that there is no conclusive answer to the question posed; rather it depends on the country and the individual circumstances of each person.
Does the employment offer them greater independence in the US?
Domestic workers experience in the United Sates varies dramatically depending on the visa-status of women and the work arrangements in place for the domestic worker. In general Live in maids in the US are the most devoid of independence and control of their lives, and often work long hours without a day off. On the other hand live out domestic workers to some extent has more independence and freedom of their lives, but this is dependent on the worker being legally allowed to work and remain in the US.
The common conception of a ‘live-out’ maid is that they are empowered and have control of
lives, however in the US some women working as ‘maids’ are objectified and treated as commodity to be sold at auction. May women are exploited through labor agencies in the ...
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...hem to help their families back home and improve their own financial situation. Another benefit from working in the UAE is that generosity is a social value within the UAE. Employers give tips to their employees, give them money to buy gifts and electronic once their contract ends for their families back home, and the domestic workers get to travel over summer with their employer (ilo report p.34). It could be argued that domestic workers in the UAE do have some sense of agency like the workers in the US, but no where near the same extent. Arguable the domestic workers have agency due to the fact that they had a choice whether or not to go work in UAE and they independently earning money for there family. Nevertheless they lack agency in terms of their freedom of movement thought and sexuality since they are ‘enslaved’ to their employer to the end of their contract.
The exploitation of women as sex objects is also easy to find. Both works contain extreme i...
According to Jeanne Boydston, the relationship between home and work in the antebellum America was very strong, especially for women. Work, for both men and women, had direct correlations to the household. During the antebellum period, women were basically paid household workers. According to “The Pastoralization of Housework,” a wife’s basic housework would average around $150 per year, if
The two works of literature nudging at the idea of women and their roles as domestic laborers were the works of Zora Neale Hurston in her short story “Sweat”, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Whatever the setting may be, whether it is the 1920’s with a woman putting her blood, sweat and tears into her job to provide for herself and her husband, or the 1890’s where a new mother is forced to stay at home and not express herself to her full potential, women have been forced into these boxes of what is and is not acceptable to do as a woman working or living at home. “Sweat” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” draw attention to suppressing a woman’s freedom to work along with suppressing a woman’s freedom to act upon her
Throughout the classical and postclassical eras, it is evident that women have always held a certain label whether it be positive or negative. This was evident throughout various regions such as the Middle East, Africa, Americas, and Europe. The time period from 1750-1914 was also an era of industrialization, in places especially like Europe. New machinery and a grand-scale labor force was required to allow the country to prosper as much as possible. From 1750 to 1914, the status of women in Western Euope changed through an increase in employment opportunities and through the earning of women’s rights, however, female labor in designated households was invariably evident.
Kittay, Eva Feder. Love's Labor: Essays on Women, Equality, and Dependency. New York: Routledge, 1999. Print.
McBride, Kari Boyd. “A Boarding House is not a Home: Women’s Work and Woman’s Worth on the Margins of Domesticity.” The University Book second edition. 472-487.
International human rights lawyer Dianne Post has described the institution of prostitution as founded on the principle of “structural inequality by gender, class and race”, in essence painting sex work as the exploitation women of low economic standing merely because they are desperate enough to perform it (Datta & Post 3). Admittedly, sex work is a primarily female profession, though the Internet has lead to growing populations of transgender and male sex workers from the most liberal areas, such as California, to the most restrictive, like South Africa (Minichiello, Victor, Scott, and Callander), but there is simply to little data discussing these population groups to draw any definite conclusions. Where Post loses sight of her larger argument, that women should be treated as equals, is when she decidedly paints women as the victims of prostitution. This argument has blatant hypocrisy in that it ignores the fact that the majority of women participating in sex work are not trafficked sex slaves, but women willingly exchanging money for sexual acts, who are capable of facing the consequences of these actions. In fact, it is an extension of this argument that assumes that women cannot be held responsible for their actions that constitutes one of the primary failings of the Nordic
Society has seen the male dynamic of superiority, designation as the “bread winner”, or head of household for centuries. Women were specifically assigned to the roles of wife, mother, and nurturer through the process of the sexual or gendered division of labor. However, that has not always been the case. Over centuries of change and shifts in economic development, the roles of women have changed to adapt to their specific roles in society. The status of the individuals in society was defined by sex, age, physical trai...
A house is not a home if no one lives there. During the nineteenth century, the same could be said about a woman concerning her role within both society and marriage. The ideology of the Cult of Domesticity, especially prevalent during the late 1800’s, emphasized the notion that a woman’s role falls within the domestic sphere and that females must act in submission to males. One of the expected jobs of a woman included bearing children, despite the fact that new mothers frequently experienced post-partum depression. If a woman were sterile, her purposefulness diminished. While the Cult of Domesticity intended to create obliging and competent wives, women frequently reported feeling trapped or imprisoned within the home and within societal expectations put forward by husbands, fathers, and brothers.
Many traditional women faced those same challenges of balancing the care of their children and household obligations while successfully satisfying their working husbands. “They took pride in a clean, comfortable home and satisfaction in serving a good meal because no one had explained to them that the only work worth doing is that for which you get paid”. (Hekker 277.)
In the now advanced world, slavery should be an issue of the past, however there are several causes that allows slavery to still be a problem. One main cause of modern day slavery is that “[in many countries] domestic work is not only accepted socially and culturally, but is also regarded in a positive light” ("Domestic work." International Labour Organization). Cultural beliefs of gender roles and the benefit that comes from domestic work makes it a very popular career in several countries, such as Indonesia and China. Other causes of this widespread travesty include “poverty and its feminization, social exclusion, lack of education, gender and ethnic discrimination, violence suffered by children in their own homes, displacement, rural-urban migration and the loss of parents due to conflict and/or disease” and also debt bondage ("Domestic work." International Labour Organization). Another main issue is that those who are victims of domestic exploitation are being tricked into servitude by their employers. After being told to sign a document in a foreign language, they are then told that the document stated that if they wish to leave they would have to pay the employers a large sum of m...
In the late 1800’s to the 1900’s women were not superior. Their spouses did not only govern them constantly, they were in complete care of their husbands. They could not make decisions; the men must tell the women how, when, why, and where to do something. If a husband says a woman must do something, she must listen. Like Louise from “The Story of an Hour” and the narrator from “The Yellow Wallpaper,” they, too, are cared for by their husbands and are inferior to their husbands or any other men. The only jobs they have are inside the home. The confinement in their homes leads them to be overly enjoyed when they are freed from their husband’s power.
Some people might think that most women should be at home and do housework, or find some easy tasks because it is not possible for women to work long-hours and then take care of their home. In China, women stay at home and do housework and it is really simple. Without the permission of their husband, they cannot go out to find a job because ...
Females are targeted more than males due to their vulnerability, position as being lower than men, and the sexual preferences of society. Many cultures view woman as a possession used for sex and they do not have sexual rights to her own body. “Exploitative employers prefer to use trafficked women—traditionally seen as submissive, cheap, and pliable—for simple and repetitive tasks in agriculture, food processing, labor-intensive manufacturing, and domestic servitude” (US Department of State).
For centuries, women has always been dominated and controlled by men. Society has viewed women as the weaker gender and relied on men in order to survive. As time went on, things have changed, society has became more advance and so are women. During the World War II, women have increased their role in the society by replacing the men’s in the labor market and also increased their status in the society. Today, the growth of women in the work force continually to raise and so are their status. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the National Bureau of Economic Research, statistics have shown 58.1% of women were in the labor market in 2011 (USBLS) compared to employment rate during the war was 35% of women in the labor market in 1945 (Bussing-Burks). So what factors must have interested women to move from being housewife to the work force? Explanations can be derived through observations of their relationship in the household, their relative status in the society, and their rationality in decision-making.