Over the course of my research, I have always felt that domestic work should be considered in both its paid and unpaid forms, because these two modes exist in changing, but related, ways over time.

My initial interest was in women's unpaid housework and how American society values that type of work.[1] I found that people determined the status of being a housewife depending on their own social class. Working class women tended to value the role, because having the ability to be a full-time housewife would be a luxury in their families, one that could they could not afford. Meanwhile, middle class women tended to devalue the status of housewives, probably because their education allowed them to have a higher status with paid jobs as an option. Undoubtedly, this difference in standpoint affects how middle class women view (and undervalue) the working class women they sometimes hire to work in their homes.

From a white and middle class point of view, "liberation" from unpaid housework—either by reducing the amount of work or passing it on to others—is a desirable goal. Early in the twentieth century, some scholars thought that household technology, like technologies used in industrial work, would make housework easier and reduce the need for paid domestic workers. By the end of the century it was clear that while technology (especially hot and cold water plumbing, sewage, and electricity) had lightened the drudgery of household tasks, it had not "liberated" women from housework. Instead, technologies had allowed middle class women to take over the work previously done by live-in domestic workers or by other family members, thus increasing housewives' total workload as they lost assistance and, simultaneously, as the standards of cleanliness increased, raising expectations as to the amount of work that should be accomplished.[2] Thus, the number of hours wives spent on housework did not significantly decrease in relation to the increase in household technology. And, since the total number of unpaid housework hours did not decline, the demand remained for paid domestic workers to take on some of these tasks.

Nonetheless, there was a change in the structure of paid domestic work and in the people who entered this field. Early in the twentieth century, U.S. domestic workers were often young and single, usually Irish or Scandinavian immigrant women, who performed "live in" domestic work in another woman's home. But by the middle of the century, domestic workers were more likely to be married women of color, such as African American women and Latinas, who lived with their own families and who pioneered the concept of paid housework as "day work."[3] This shift in the demographics of domestic workers was primarily due to the growth of other employment opportunities for white immigrant or working class women in factory or white-collar employment, while women of color were trapped by occupational segregation and discrimination into domestic or agricultural work. Technology had allowed more women to make use of part-time, non-resident domestic workers for the remaining "heavy" tasks such as laundry.

For at least two reasons the demographics of domestic workers changed once again, starting in the 1960s. First, affirmative action regulations opened up white collar and professional work to women of color, and they left the field of domestic work when they could. And, second, at the same time, shifts in the U.S. economy and social norms led to the decline of the single breadwinner model and made two income families the norm. Women were more likely to participate in the traditional labor force, creating more need for domestic or carework, while at the same time the supply of household workers decreased. On the other hand, today's globalization makes economic survival difficult in poor countries, while affluent countries have a strong demand for low wage domestic labor, resulting in the "feminization of migration." Rhacel Parreñas has described the result as an international division of reproductive labor, transferring white women's domestic and carework labor in developed countries to women of color who migrate from developing nations as contract workers or undocumented workers.[4]

In The Global Dimensions of Gender and Carework, Mary Zimmerman, Jacqueline Litt, and I describe how migration and citizenship have shaped who performs paid and unpaid carework and under what conditions it is done.[5] We see three outcomes of migration. First, there is fluidity between paid and unpaid carework over a woman's life course and across geographic space. For example, since paid and unpaid carework are not mutually exclusive, women who migrate for paid work continue to nurture their families at home even while working overseas. Furthermore, stringent regulations on paid carework allow women to migrate for a limited time period, so at some point they must return to their home countries and perform unpaid carework.

Second, migrant careworkers often have only limited citizenship rights and experience considerable surveillance by governments and employers. For some migrants, paid work is prohibited and few citizenship rights are available. Other paid careworkers are recruited by employment agencies in developed or newly industrializing countries from a limited set of developing countries usually defined by immigration laws. For example, Taiwan's 1992 Employment Service Law limits foreign workers to three unskilled labor occupations—domestic workers, caregivers, and construction or manufacturing workers—as well as six white-collar job categories. Since only workers from the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam are eligible for these unskilled jobs, there is an implicit association between perception of skill and race or nationality.[6] In other words, racial and ethnic occupational segregation and stereotyping are fostered by the Taiwanese government's immigration restrictions on domestic workers and jobs become racialized. Once women arrive to work under these temporary labor contracts, they are constantly surveilled—their passports are often confiscated, they are required to undergo regular health and pregnancy tests, prohibited from marrying while employed, are given limited opportunities to get out of the house and socialize with other careworkers, and their pay is postponed—all of which limit their substantive rights as citizens.

And, finally, transnational migrants often experience marginalization based on the interconnections of gender, class (usually their social class in the new country and not their class status at home), and nationality (especially highlighting presumed racial-ethnic characteristics). One consequence of globalized carework is that the inequalities among women are intensifying and global stratification systems are strengthened, rather than undermined. Middle- and upper-class women in the United States and other developed countries benefit from these migration chains, obtaining low-cost help with the domestic and care work that is still defined as their responsibility.

My recent edited book with Minjeong Kim shows that migration for domestic work is an important focus for feminist and gender researchers in some regions, especially Asia and Latin American, as well as in the United States.[7] And, most recently, Professor Kim and I are beginning to examine migration for marriage and how it is related to the demand for reproductive and domestic labor. In contrast to paid carework, unpaid carework gains little legal attention and is regulated primarily through marriage (and citizenship) laws rather than by labor laws. Some women migrate from former communist countries (such as Poland or Russia) or from troubled economies in Asia (such as Thailand, Vietnam, or the Philippines) as mail-order/email order brides, or perhaps arranged through match-making agencies, to marry men from developed countries or newly industrializing nations. Frequently, such women are motivated by economic need; meanwhile, men are seeking traditional marriages in which wives focus their activities on unpaid domestic work and carework. Some of these future husbands adhere to the stereotype that "exotic" Asian women will be home-oriented. In addition to seeking wives who perform unpaid domestic and carework, others seek wives who are ethnically similar to themselves, such as the South Korean farmers, studied by Minjeong Kim, who seek brides from the Philippines, Vietnam, or Japan because they live in rural areas from which local women have left in order to find paid work in cities (and to avoid becoming farm wives). Unfortunately, most studies of migration and carework labor do not include marriage migrants in their analyses, perhaps because they seem to be unaffected by labor regulations. Our new project comparatively examines at least six countries (primarily, but not solely, in Asia) that keep national aggregate data on the national origin of the "foreign born" spouses of native born residents. We will contrast the international origin of the spouses that men choose with those that women choose, as well comparing those choices to the typical race-ethnicity of domestic workers in each country.

As you can see, the relationship between paid and unpaid domestic work is structured on a global level, as well as at the national level. As more and more women in industrialized countries become unwilling to bear the sole burden of domestic and care work, it may be taken on by poor women of color or by women migrating from developing countries. But as women in developing countries become less willing to marry into traditional roles in their native countries, or other demographic imbalances are in play (such as in China where there are more men than women, due to their one child policy), more men will seek this type of free labor abroad by connecting with marriage migrants. Of course, if more men were willing to equally share in domestic and care labor, the demand for either form of "feminized migration" would be reduced.

Endnotes

1. Christine E. Bose and Peter H. Rossi, "Gender and Jobs: Prestige Standings of Occupations as Affected by Gender," American Sociological Review 48.3 (1983): 316-330. [Return to text]

2. Christine E. Bose, Philip Bereano, and Mary Malloy, "Household Technology and the Social Construction of Housework," Technology and Culture 25.1 (1984): 53-82. [Return to text]

3. Christine E. Bose, Women in 1900: Gateway to the Political Economy of the 20th Century (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001). [Return to text]

4. Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, "Migrant Filipina Domestic Workers and the International Division of Reproductive Labor," Gender & Society 14.4 (2000): 560-580. [Return to text]

5. Mary K. Zimmerman, Jacqueline S. Litt, and Christine E. Bose, eds., Global Dimensions of Gender and Carework (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006). [Return to text]

6. Shu-Ju Ada Cheng, "Rethinking the Globalization of Domestic Service: Foreign Domestics, State Control, and the Politics of Identity in Taiwan." Gender & Society 17.2 (2003): 166-186. [Return to text]

7. Christine E. Bose and Minjeong Kim, eds., Global Gender Research: Transnational Perspectives (New York: Routledge Press, 2009). [Return to text]