Of Mops and Maids: Contradictions and Continuities in Bureaucratized Domestic Work

Abstract

This paper explores domestic employment relations in the context of the growth of the post-industrial service sector and the “stalled revolution.” The data comes from fieldwork conducted among domestic workers, employers, and clients, as well as managers and owners of housecleaning agencies. By presenting a case study of the household service agency “Helping Hands Housekeeping,” I compare and contrast bureaucratized arrangements of paid domestic work with the “traditional” private employment arrangement, demonstrating how the bureaucratization of paid domestic work has (and has not) affected the relations, conditions, and experiences of this occupation. To sell their service, managers train workers to “care” for clients. In addition, HHH managers create a work culture of caring and service as a form of worker control and as a strategy to combat worker turnover. The gender ideologies and personalized management tactics used by these organizations mask the low pay, part-time hours and lack of benefits that persist within the more bureaucratized arrangements of paid domestic work. Workers also implement “strategic personalism” in their relations with employers and clients and may seek out personalistic relationships and use them to their advantage. This research challenges the modernist notion that more formal and structured work relations are sufficient to eliminate the emotional and psychological exploitation of domestic workers. Indeed, my fieldwork suggests that private employment arrangements offer workers more options and greater potential for negotiating wages and control over the work process than do the more rationalized organizations and relations of household service agencies.