Pathways through Poverty: Ecuadorian Domestic Workers’ Labor Trajectories

• In Event: 2451 - Section on Organizations, Occupations, and Work Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 14. Navigating Bad Jobs

Abstract

Everyone knows that domestic employment is a bad job: poorly paid and exploitative. We know much less about domestic workers’ work histories and how they make decisions about paid work in light of their unpaid domestic responsibilities. This paper presents findings from 52 interviews with current and former domestic workers in four Ecuadorian cities, focusing on individual work histories, labor market trajectories, and socioeconomic mobility. Most of these women leave school early, and move in and out of informal jobs throughout their life course. They also move in and out of the paid workforce in response to changes in their family’s health and finances. The research participants do not experience domestic work as a stepping stone to better career opportunities, perceiving all the jobs available to them as equally undesirable. They see their paid and unpaid work as similar, forming part of their "lucha" (struggle) to survive and get ahead. Two innovative aspects of this study suggest new ways to research domestic work. First, by including in our research women who have previously worked in private homes, as well as those who are currently employed, we can get a better sense of labor trajectories of poor women generally. Second, we can better understand domestic workers’ seemingly abrupt employment decisions by attending to their work-family dilemmas.

Author

• Erynn Masi de Casanova, University of Cincinnati