Revealed Cities: A Photovoice Project with Domestic Workers in Salvador, Brazil

Abstract

Salvador is amuch-photographed city. Beyond thegorgeous beaches and the romantic splendour of the historic centre are informal settlements where the majority of Salvador’s inhabitants live. Middle-class Bahians rarely venture into these neighbourhoods. Yet every day, thousands of women traverse the city to spend long days cleaning their homes, caring for their children, washing their clothes and preparing their food. Their lives are hidden. Their work is underpaid and undervalued. Their invisible hands sustain families, support middle-class women’s careers and make a significant contribution to Brazil’s growing economy. Some 9.1million Brazilianwomenworkas domestic workers, constituting around17.8 percent of the entire female labour force. Since the first domestic workers’ association was founded in the mid-1930s, domestic worker activists have been engaged in a long, hard, struggle for rights and recognition. They have won significant labour rights. But many domestic workers remain undocumented and continue to suffer exploitation and abuse in their places of work. The domestic workers’struggle is not just one for labour rights. It is also for dignity: to be treated as fully human. Re-presenting their humanity, as well as revealing the conditions in the places where they live and work became a vehicle for a participatory photography project that Pathways carried out in collaboration with Creuza Oliveira and colleagues from the National Federation of DomesticWorkers (FENATRAD) and its local chapter. Action research with FENETRAD turned the tables on the conventional researcher^researched relationship, placing domestic workers themselves at the heart of the process of enquiry. Terezinha and Andrea came to work closely with Creuza, a long-time comrade and colleague of Terezinha’s in a project that explored the historyof domestic workers’ mobilization, and issues of power and empowerment in domestic workers’everyday lives. An impulsive purchase of an armful of disposable cameras in a Brighton photography shop byAndrea led Development, 2010, 53(2), (299–300) r 2010 Society for International Development 1011-6370/10 www.sidint.org/development/