Viewpoints Feeding the mouth that bites | Feeding the mouth that bites |
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30 July 2001 The horrendous suffocation of 58 economic migrants recently has highlighted once again the increasing traffic of labour around the globe. While some suffer the ultimate price for work, others only have to suffer scalding irons to the skin for their trouble, (Guardian Tuesday July 25 2000). In old commonwealth countries like Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong, trade in domestic help from the Philipines and Indonesia is especially lively. Young women, usually single graduates, are choosing to leave their families and take up live-in positions thousands of miles away from home. Among the wealth and luxury of their employers, they are often subject to abuses they could never have dreamt of. This is no underground, illicit operation of course. The 'maid trade' has been regulated for some time in most 'developed' countries. Indeed in places like Singapore, it is a consumer service like any other. Take the Jo-An Maid Agency for instance. Simply log on to www.singaporeeverything.com/jo-an/ and choose from a catalogue of 25 smiling, suited women, sorted according to age, marital status nationality and religion. The domestic worker of your choice will be delivered by return. All this is subject to availability, naturally. One Singapore employer had this to say: "Maids are a status symbol. They are a great help in the house. All your friends have one. It's so your mum can go out with her friends for lunch and talk about 'her maid'. It is an indignity for them, but it's not exploitation because the money that they earn goes a long way in their country. It's either indignity or poverty, prostitution. My mother made our maid cut the grass with a pair of scissors. She was out there all afternoon in the hot sun. It was our first maid and we didn't know what to do with her. None of the maids ever complained of violence though, and no-one would ever write about it." London's employers are a little more low key, as perhaps befits the guilty post-colonial. You will, however, trip right in to the Philipino scene if you hang around the check-outs in the King's Road Waitrose. For many, it seems, domestic help is a fair deal. She gets the cash, we get to go have lunch and not do any washing. Others, like our hypertense Hong Kong tai tai, treat the relationship as deeply hierarchical. So how does this regulated, free exchange of labour for payment turn into a branding attack by a mad tai tai? Disregarding the insane actions of the minority who scald their maids with hot irons, commentators are beginning to spot more sinister implications. A high proportion of domestic help is going to middle aged men "getting fed up with feminist inspired bullshit" and in search of "a more traditional kind of wife..." (waikato.ac.nz). It is claimed that racial and sexual stereotypes are at work, supporting a hierarchy which keeps the female economic migrant poor, and powerless (waikato.ac.nz; isiswomen.org). In Canada, support groups are forming within the community to help Filipino workers mistreated by their nice white, middle class bosses. You can only wonder how long the poorest women in domestic service will continue to feed the mouth that bites them. |
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