Between Women: Domestics and Their EmployersBetween Women is the result of forty in-depth interviews, interviews enhanced by the author's own experience as a domestic worker for ten employers in the greater Boston area. The reader is quickly drawn into the world of domestic workers as the author allows the women to speak for themselves whenever possible. Clearly relevant to labor studies, women's studies and black studies, at its essence this book is a study of the social psychology of relationships of domination. Yet, while focusing on these relationships, the author never loses sight of the larger social structure and how it affects and is affected by employer-domestic dyads. The opening chapter provides an overview of domestic service in the Western tradition, most notably a detailed history of servitude in the South and northeastern United States, with brief attention to a few non-Western locales. Then, what follows is a description of the conditions of work--the physical labor, hours, compensation, and problems--with the focus on the women and the major dynamics of their relationships. Unlike many works on domination, this book gives as much attention to the effects on the minds and lives of the employers as it does to the effects on the domestics. And it is this exploration, in particular--of the demands, reactions, preferences and perceptions of employers--that reveals how this labor arrangement functions ideologically as well as materially to support the class, gender and racial hierarchies of this country. Author note: Judith Rollins is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Simmons College in Boston. |
Contents
Introduction | 5 |
The History of Domestic Service | 21 |
The Work | 63 |
The Women | 91 |
Deference and Maternalism | 155 |
Invisibility Consciousness of the Other | 207 |
Common terms and phrases
accept Albert Memmi American aspects attitudes behavior black domestics black women Boston Chestnut Hill childcare cleaning colonized color David Katzman Davidoff deference dollars a week domestic help Domestic Servant Class domestic service domestic servitude domestic workers domestic's domestics I interviewed domination Elizabeth Roy employed employers and domestics employers I interviewed Erving Goffman Ester Boserup Esther Jones ethical exploitation Fanon feel female domestic female employer Frantz Fanon gifts girl hiring domestic housework husband Ibid important Indian inferior Joel Kovel Karen Edwards kind kitchen labor force Latin America less live-in help live-out lives Lund Maids male master material middle-class mistress mother never nineteenth century occupation Odette Harris Pat Owens percent person position preferred psychological race racial racism relation relationship ressentiment role slavery slaves society South Africa things told tradition typical urban wages woman York