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The paper uses the concept of intersectionality to explore the central role played by the categories of
race, class and gender in the biographies of female domestic workers in Brazil. While showing how
these categories are implicated in the inequalities and subalternization experienced by these
actors, the paper also reveals how female domestic workers have appropriated them to promote
themselves politically as a professional class. Adopting a historical viewpoint, the second part of the
paper shows the formation of a public agenda for female domestic workers' unions and their
negotiation with class-based, feminist and black movements in Brazil. It concludes by showing that
unionized domestic workers have developed an original form of feminism that combines aspects
taken from all these movements.
2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Introduction
Domestic labor in Brazil is a symbol of gender, class and
race inequalities, as the majority of the domestic workers in
Brazil are black lower-class women. According to a recent
census, 7.2 million people are professional domestic workers,
93% of whom are female; 61.6% of those females are black
and 38.4% are white. The over-representation of black female
domestic workers can get even more evident: 12% of white
women with a job are domestic workers; the rates increase to
21% for black women (IPEA, 2011).
The existence of a domestic labor force means that there are
high-income families with the means to pay another person's
wages. On the other hand, it means a service that compensates
the lack of basic public service (daycare, for instance). Because of
that, families with a higher income are able to overcome the lack
of some public services by privatizing them, by hiring private
services. Such economic inequalities are connected to both
gender and race naturalization. Domestic labor is naturally seen
as a woman's job and, as such, not worthy of a fair pay, as it
supposedly does not involve special skills. On the other hand,
due to Brazil's colonial history, domestic labor is also seen as the
black woman's natural place.
One of the most evident consequences of those families'
private solutions for the lack of public services is the fragile
state regulation concerning female domestic workers and their
0277-5395/$ see front matter 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2014.01.004
concept is helpful in understanding the interwoven relationships of diverse axes of power, the most important of which are
race, class and gender, in the production of both subjugation and
political agency. This approach is effective for comprehending
domestic labor in Brazil, as it takes us beyond discourses that
isolate individual markers of difference by dynamically joining
them. We focus on how the axes of gender, race and class power
act in that face-to-face relationship which disempowers the
female domestic worker. On the other hand, we explore how
those same axes of gender, race and class power acted as a tool
for empowerment and democratic mobilization through the
domestic workers' political organizations. Concerning the latter,
such axes of power are mobilized from exchanges among the
domestic workers' political organizations and the feminist and
the black movements, as well as their syndicates. As a result of
this exchange, the female domestic workers have succeeded in
some aspects concerning their profession's regulations.
This article is divided in five parts. The first part describes
our research methodologies. The following part shows the
theories about the concept of intersectionality. It is good to
highlight that such concept may refer to either disempowerment or empowerment. The third and fourth parts use
empirical data and the concept of intersectionality to explain
how the axes of gender, race and class power interact, on the
one hand, to trigger disempowerment in the female domestic
workers' workplace and, on the other hand, to trigger political
mobilization through their unions. Finally, the last part brings
our final considerations.
Methodology: Listening to domestic workers' voices
Based on the main role of the concept of intersectionality, this
article aims to study how gender, race and class dimensions
work in the private sphere, and how it causes disempowerment
and inequality; and, as far as the public sphere is concerned, how
they result in empowerment and democratic mobilization.
The data on which this research is based on was collected
in two different periods, all from unionized domestic workers. In
2006, as part of a research for my doctorate study, I carried
out semi-structured interviews with twenty-three unionized
workers from five out of approximately forty existent unions in
Brazil. Those unions were based in Campinas (So Paulo state),
So Paulo (So Paulo state), Salvador (Bahia state), Recife
(Pernambuco state) and Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro state). I
also interviewed the leaders of the Domestic Workers National
Federation and did some research in the files of each one of those
unions, as well as in documents and resolutions of the domestic
workers' national congresses.1 During my research, I traced the
history of the Santos Domestic Workers Association, which was
the first political association of female domestic workers in
Brazil, founded in 1936. In 2011, I interviewed five domestic
workers of the unions of the New Iguau district (Rio de Janeiro
state) and the Franca district (So Paulo state). Those seven
unions, especially the five from my 2006 research, have been
in charge of the organization of the domestic workers' national
congresses. They are considered the core of the domestic
workers' movement not only because of that, but also because
they give to us a historical glimpse into the domestic workers'
political organizations (Bernardino-Costa, 2007, 2011).
The interviews were carried out in each one of the abovementioned unions and they took 90 min in average. All
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their boss' wife, since they are both from different classes
and races. Similarly, Carla and Madalene come from poor,
rural backgrounds, which explain why they became domestic
workers. Finally, their racial origin black women adds up to
the chain of vulnerabilities, completing the process of naturalization that subjected them, as children, to sexual abuse and, as a
consequence, not worthy of wage. Therefore, the concept of
intersectionality shows us the interaction among the various
axes of power. That enables us to analyze the origins of disempowerment, inequalities and domination. Now, the concept
of intersectionality is different from the idea of double and triple
discrimination. In this given case, there is a dynamic process in
which each one of the axes of power applies their own
energy, and those energies are not nullified by one another. All
considered, Madalene and Carla are subjects of the discrimination, disempowerment and oppression caused by the dynamic
energy of each of the analyzed dimensions, all of which act
equally. The explanatory potential of intersectionality is also
significant, as it builds an inter-relationship among a macrocontext affected by a racist, sexist and class-biased speech, and
the domestic workers' life dynamics.
The intensity of the subjugation is directly proportional to
the fact that these domestic workers are describing a period
of their lives when they were still children. Female domestic
workers gradually become subjects in their workplace as
they acquire experience and reach adulthood. They develop
various strategies to reduce their workload, such as performing
tasks slowly, not cleaning the entire house every day, but just
some areas, and negotiating with their employers (Brah, 2006).
However, one of the decisive factors in domestic workers
becoming subjects again is ceasing to live and sleep in
their employers' house. This independence enables them to
re-establish control over their work time and take days off
work for whatever reasons. Some of the reasons for this change
include: (a) recent urban changes in Brazilian cities in which
the maid's quarters have disappeared from the new architectural designs for middle-class residences; (b) a public campaign
by some domestic workers' unions to combat the idea that they
are the family's daughters and simultaneously encourage the
women to find their own home to live in.
For domestic workers, having their own home opens up a
new world, much in the same way as participating in union
activities, since it allows them to build relations based on
solidarity among equals, breaking with the values imposed by
their employers. As we shall see below, the unions comprise a
social space in which the markers of race, class and gender are
seen positively rather than negatively, variables that interact
with each other to empower, building solidarity between
female domestic workers and other social actors that enables
political mobilization. Therefore, unlike the face-to-face relationship between domestic workers and their employers, the
union becomes a place for the construction of a collective
identity, in which the intersectionality among the axes of
gender, race and class power moves towards a democratic
mobilization and the domestic workers' empowerment.
Intersectionality between class, race and gender in the
female domestic workers' unions
Becoming involved in the political activities of a trade
union is a watershed in domestic workers' lives. Unions are
of Rio de Janeiro. The following year, the JOC also organized the
First Regional Congress of Female Domestic Workers in the city
of Recife, which brought together workers from the states of
Cear, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraba and Pernambuco (Soares,
2002).
It is important to note that as a labor organization, Young
Christian Workers supported workers as a universal and
homogeneous category. Female domestic workers were not
included in the organization's official campaign agenda
though, due to their specific condition, including the lack of
any legal recognition, while the majority of workers in Brazil
already possessed some rights since the 1930s. Despite their
specificity relative to other professional categories, there were
groups of domestic workers at the meetings of Young Christian
Workers. Odete Maria Conceio, one of the founders of the
Professional Association of Female Domestic Workers of Rio de
Janeiro in the 1960s, reported an incompatibility between
domestic workers and the working class, when the latter was
thought of as a homogeneous group. As soon as the domestic
workers recognized their differences vis--vis other workers,
they set out to establish their own associations in order
to take measures concerning issues specific to them: a
professional category not yet recognized by the State, therefore
without rights, formed by black women from the poor working
class.
While the domestic workers' movement gained ground
through dialog with the Catholic Church, Laudelina de Campos
Melo, living in Campinas, So Paulo, founded the Association of
Campinas in the early 1960s. However, instead of the Catholic
Church playing the main role, in Campinas we note a strong
coalition between the black movement, especially Black Experimental Theatre and the Association.
In the 1960s, the female domestic workers' movement
spread across the country as the result of interactions between
the Catholic Church (with its emphasis on the working class
cause), the black movement and the trade unions. Different
female domestic workers' groups and associations allied with
their partners in distinct ways. During this phase of the
domestic workers movement, the class-based interpretation
of the condition of female domestic workers prevailed at the
national level.
This is also the impression we get of the movement on
reading the resolutions produced during the National Congresses
of the 1960s and 1970s. It does not mean that gender and race
issues were absent, but rather that the political mobilization of
domestic workers was centered on being recognized as part of
the working class and consequently winning the same rights as
other workers. Domestic workers were finally recognized by
Brazilian legislation for the first time in 1972, when they
obtained the right to register their employment, take twenty
days' vacation per year and receive basic welfare coverage. This
law represented the successful outcome of the female
domestic workers' struggle and the movement's primary
aim of achieving recognition of these working women as
members of the working class.
It is important to note that although class struggle had been
the recurring theme of much of the domestic worker movement's activism, such as the campaign for domestic employees
to have their own home, racialcolonialist issues were also
present. For example, domestic workers frequently compared
the maid's room in the employer's house to slaves' quarters, the
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