Abstract
A Twitter feed is exposing how millions of Brazilian domestic workers are treated as an underclass.
Delving into the timeline of Brazilian Twitter account @aminhaempregada is a sobering experience, like eavesdropping on hundreds of conversations taking place in every far-flung corner of the country. The account was created in May to aggregate and retweet posts using the term a minha empregada (“my maid”) or the word empregada (“maid”).
“That idiot”, “that slut”, “the lazy whore” are some of the choice phrases that show up alongside the words minha empregada. Another favourite is filha da puta (“daughter of a whore”) or – because on Twitter, every character counts – more often just fdp.
“I think the most offensive tweets are the racist ones,” says the account’s creator and curator, a young marketing professional who prefers to remain anonymous. “I remember one that said something like, ‘My maid was supposed to wash my trainers and she hasn’t done it, the dirty macaca’ [‘monkey’, a racist insult]. Some people feel at extraordinary liberty to speak freely on the internet.”
On Twitter, with its relatively elite group of users, there’s no a minha patroa (“my boss”) equivalent so the other side of the story can be heard, and very few posts by domestic workers themselves in response to @aminhaempregada. Some children of maids reply. “My mother is a maid, but they treat her so well I never imagined there were people who disrespected maids like this,” wrote one of @aminhaempregada’s thousands of followers. A male domestic worker wrote: “I’m north-eastern, black, a domestic worker and poor. No one knows how we suffer.” His voice is the exception.
He explains how in Brazil even the terms “my maid” is loaded and that gave him the idea of searching Twitter for it
Type empregada doméstica into a search engine and the results are mainly agencies or information on employers’ responsibilities. That lack of a public voice mirrors maids’ social isolation in the workplace, especially for live-in employees. There are thought to be some nine million domestic employees working in the country currently, and the man behind @aminhaempregada, like millions Brazilians of even slightly affluent means, was raised by a succession of maids himself. “I loved our maids,” he tells Index. “I still have the vinyl record one of them gave me for my birthday when I was a child. It’s one of my treasured possessions.” Still shocked daily by the tweets that show up in his search feeds, he explains how in Brazil even the term “my maid” is loaded and that was what gave him the idea of searching Twitter for it.
Domestic service is a sensitive subject in Brazil, where the scars of slavery still run deep
“The term is not technically wrong – of course people say ‘my doctor’, ‘my dentist’, but the phrase ‘my maid’ had always made me feel uncomfortable when I hear it.”
The term has a proprietorial ring to it: domestic service is a sensitive subject in Brazil, where the scars of slavery still run deep. According to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, 4.86 million African slaves were shipped to Brazil from the mid-1500s until the late 1800s, compared to 388,000 shipped directly to North America.
ABOVE: Maids take a break on Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Credit: Sue Cunningham Photographic /Alamy
A constitutional amendment was passed in March 2013 to establish a range of rights for domestic employees, including the right to an eight-hour day, extra pay for overtime and nights, and basic health and safety guarantees. The amendment, presented by Benedita da Silva, a member of Congress and a former domestic servant herself, is expected to be consolidated this year with a second raft of legislation dealing with some of the thornier nitty-gritty needed to bring the rights of domestic employees into line with those of the rest of Brazilian workers. There is currently a debate in Congress over whether the employers of domestic workers will have to shoulder the same financial responsibilities, when firing their employees, as companies.
Carlos Alberto Pinto de Carvalho is an employment lawyer and a partner in the start-up Webhome, a website providing legal advice for domestic employers. He supports the legislation and its effect of formalising the relationship between maids and their employers. “It mainly serves to guarantee payment for overtime and nights,” he says. “But it also sends a message to employers that they run the risk of being fined and empowers employees to speak up for themselves.”
A lack of reliable information, however, means that the ability to speak up is complicated for domestic employees, many of whom have limited education and lack the resources to find out about new rights and legislation.
“A friend of mine told me about the new law for domestic workers,” says Valdenes Lopes de Oliveira, 43, who has worked as a maid since she was 17. “She saw something about it on the daytime news.”
Does she think the government has a duty to find ways to divulge the information about domestic employees’ new rights?
“I think the press does,” she says. “I am only able to watch the news in the evening, and I’ve never seen it reported there at all. They should report it more, so everyone can see it.”
As a result of her friend’s information, Lopes informed her employer that she was now legally entitled to a lunch break.
“She said I could have 15 minutes for a sandwich, but I told her I need at least 30 minutes. I need a proper meal at lunchtime,” says Lopes. A cooked lunch underpinned by rice and beans is a non-negotiable part of the day for most Brazilian workers. “I don’t know how long we’re allowed by law,” Lopes continues. “Could you find out and let me know?”
The law, says Pinto de Carvalho, allows for an hour’s break for lunch in an eight-hour working day. “My sister says, ‘Why don’t you train to be a hairdresser?’” says Lopes. “But I like the job – I like the people I work for.” For a younger generation of women who might previously have gone into the profession, rising affluence and initiatives like the government’s Bolsa Familia programme, which distributes cash benefits to millions of families on low incomes, has created new opportunities.
“Nobody wants to be a maid anymore,” says Lopes. One friend of hers has left the profession to study to become a teacher, and many of the other younger women she knows are busy pursuing careers and studies in areas like IT, hairdressing and nursing.
Meanwhile, for thousands of families accustomed to having their every need met by a servant, the prospect of having to do their own housework looms. A headline in a recent feature in Bonde, a Brazilian news and entertainment website, is a harbinger of the changes afoot: “No maid? Read on to find out how to keep your home clean and tidy yourself.”
Home truths in the Gulf
The United Arab Emirates is increasing rights for domestic workers, but many are still afraid to speak about employer abuse and failure to pay wages, writes
Bosede and Deka, two African maids working in the United Arab Emirates, have been trapped in limbo for the past three years, after their employers confiscated their passports and refused to pay them for work. Left without the ability to get legal employment, they went to their embassy for help. There they were told they could only have replacement documents if they purchased air tickets home first. Given that they do not have the money to do this, Bosede and Deke remain in the UAE, picking up cash-in-hand work, and still without passports. They claim their wages have not been paid.
Maids in the UAE are afraid to speak out about the conditions they face because of the threats to their visa status, or because they are working illegally. Labour laws are hard to implement and do not cover domestic workers. The absence of an income tax system also makes it hard to keep track of who is working and where. However, a new unified contract for domestic staff, introduced in June, may make a difference. The aim is to give maids hired by recruitment agencies protection from abuse, and employers protection from financial loss.
Michael Barney, director of Gulf Law, a law firm that works with Filipino expats in the UAE, says: “When the rules are clearer, maids will know their rights and can demand their employers observe these rules. It is really more about informing the maids of what their employers can and cannot do.” The new law guarantees regular payments, a weekly day off with full pay, 14 days’ paid annual leave and sick leave of up to 30 days. But Barney also recognises that many maids have entered the UAE undocumented, often “buying” a visa so they can work freelance or working cash-in-hand.
Official figures from the 2009 census show 321,536 women working in domestic jobs in the country, 80 per cent of them earning less than Dh1,300 (around US$350) per month. Often stories of abused maids only come to light in the UAE media when cases end up in court. Cases of rape that result in pregnancy may end up coming to the public’s attention as adultery cases in breach of sharia law, which outlaws all extramarital sex. It is also common for agreements to be reached at the end of trials that prohibit victims from speaking publicly.
While reporting on maids has not been widespread in the region’s media in the past, their stories are now getting more coverage, according to Barney. He says many cases involving abuse of domestic workers have become “quite high-profile”, including a life sentence in March for a Pakistani man convicted of raping a Filipina maid in Dubai and seven-year sentences in February for two Emirati men convicted of raping a Filipina maid in Fujairah. “Before, stories like these were not really of major interest so they were not highly publicised. Now that more people are showing concern over the issue, the media are highlighting them.”
The media landscape in UAE is also broadening. There is now a UAE-based Filipino radio station, TAG 91.1, which launched in March 2013, as well two weekly print-and-online newspapers, The Filipino Times, which launched in October 2013, and Kabayan Weekly, which launched in 2011.
© Georgia Lewis
Some names have been changed