Women & Change Chapter 7

Chapter seven titled “Domestic Service and International Networks of Caring Labor” by Doreen J. Mattingly has in-depth interviews from both domestic workers and their employees from San Diego, California where two very important issues are looked at. The first issue looks at the relationship between “social reproduction and women’s migration” (104). This is the further look and critical analysis of how these lower income women migrate to wealthy nations that have demands for these women service workers. The second issue examines the “complex connections” or gender, race/ethnicity, and nationality and how it shapes and is shaped by the institution of domestic servitude.
The general profile of the women and families that seek to employ these domestic workers are usually families that are of a high income, have been to college and/or received a college degree and they employ mostly women to do cooking, cleaning, but sometimes these duties extend further to taking care of the children and posing as nannies. Most of the women interviewed placed an emphasis on time. They don’t have time to do this and that or that employing women for these jobs helps them to save time. However in previous chapters we learned about women’s mobility so I wonder do these families ever think about what it takes for these migrant women to get these jobs locations which I can only imagine is a far distance.
In the section of chapter Immigration, Domestic Work, and Inequality hold description of how these domestic workers and their employers balance their own personal family lives. I thought it was interesting when it is said that most of the employers rely on the migrant and poor, low income women for childcare and the women who are domestic workers rely on relatives that are “poorly paid labor”. Mattingly suggests that these childcare strategies are both connected however, they are interdependent also. It is said that “they strategies these two groups of women use to access additional caring labor also construct and reinforce difference, as evidenced by the way different responsibilities and resources of young women in the two groups of households “ (120). I think that these women may feel that they are totally different however they share some of the same complications of being women who work. Although their experiences may be different, incomes/wages, and living arrangements they should realize how similar they are. I wonder if they even do.