2017 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities

June 01 - 04, 2017

Domestic service was the main female occupation throughout the twentieth century Latin America and the Caribbean. Being the most feminized occupation, it has had poor working conditions, with high levels of informality and low wages. However, after decades in which the legislation established restricted labor rights for household workers, recently --and pressured by the ILO Convention 189 and household workers' activism--, many countries in the region have enacted new laws that equate their labor rights with those of other workers. This workshop examines the ways in which this occupation was legally regulated over the last century in different Latin American and Caribbean countries: Argentina, Brazil. Chile, Jamaica and Mexico.

     Despite its importance in the labor market, recent studies still talk about domestic service invisibility to historiography. Moreover, almost thirty years after the publication of the seminal book Coordinated by Elsa Chaney and Mary Garcia Castro, efforts to coordinate different case studies are still scarce. This session constitutes an opportunity to bring together researchers specialized in various national cases in the region. By comparing them, regional and global discourses on labor, the state, and gender, will become apparent, showing when and how the authority of the state was articulated around work relations within the "private space" of the home. By doing so, this workshop will not only contribute to the present debates within historiography, but also to the discussions beyond the Academy about the strategies to enforce household workers' labor rights.