Mexico City's Domestic Workers: A Life Being Treated as a Lesser Person Nina Lakhani - The Guardian
go to original November 10, 2015

Marcelina Bautista worked as a domestic from the age of 14 until she was 36. (Sean Smith/Guardian)

There are around 2.3 million domestic workers in Mexico, including 225,000 in the capital. More than 90% are women – often indigenous women who have moved from rural villages to cities in other states to find work. Their average age is 35, but one in five began working before the legal age of 16.

In Mexico City, the vast majority either live with the families they work for or spend several hours each day travelling to and from the sprawling state of Mexico which surrounds the capital. When the traffic is particularly bad, it can take Hernández three hours to reach work in the morning.

Even today, verbal, physical and sexual abuse of domestic workers remain alarmingly common, according to a recent study by the National Board for the Prevention of Discrimination (Conapred) (pdf). It found that 14% of domestic workers had been beaten or suffered sexual abuse, or knew another domestic who had had this experience; insults are even more widespread; 17% had been falsely accused of stealing, and another 17% had been unfairly dismissed.

Among the indigenous domestic workers surveyed, a quarter said they had been banned from speaking in their mother tongue in the workplace.

...One in five domestics work 11 hours or more each day and 30% do not get any break. In Mexico City, the average weekly wage is just over $75USD; 75% of workers have never had a pay rise, and just 30% get paid holidays. Written contracts are rare.

The low paid and poorly regulated work perpetuates wider poverty. Almost half of today’s domestic workers didn’t finish secondary school, and 83% of employers do not allow their domestic staff to continue their studies, according to the Conapred study.

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