Domestic Violence Paradigms and Combating On-The-Job Violence Against Household Workers in the United States
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Michigan Journal of Gender & Law Volume 9 Issue 1 2002 "Just Like One of the Family": Domestic Violence Paradigms and Combating On-The-Job Violence Against Household Workers in the United States Kristi L. Graunke U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjgl Part of the Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, Labor and Employment Law Commons, Law and Gender Commons, Law and Race Commons, and the Legal History Commons Recommended Citation Kristi L. Graunke, "Just Like One of the Family": Domestic Violence Paradigms and Combating On-The-Job Violence Against Household Workers in the United States, 9 MICH. J. GENDER & L. 131 (2002). Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjgl/vol9/iss1/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Michigan Journal of Gender & Law by an authorized editor of University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. "JUST LIKE ONE OF THE FAMILY": DOMESTIC VIOLENCE PARADIGMS AND COMBATING ON-THE- JOB VIOLENCE AGAINST HOUSEHOLD WORKERS IN THE UNITED STATES Iristi.C.raunke* INTRODUCTION 132 I. "SYNONYMOUS WITH THE WORST DEGRADATION THAT COMES TO WOMEN:" HOUSEHOLD WORK AND ABUSE FROM COLONIZATION TO THE PRESENT • 135 A. Pre-Civil War Accounts of Servitude and Abuse • 136 B. Domestic Workers'Experiences Post-Civil War to 1920 • 138 1. Domestic Workers in the North 138 2. Domestic Workers in the South 140 C. Domestic Work 1920 to Present • 143 1. Moving Out, Living Out: African American Migration and Re-Making Domestic Relations in the North • 143 2. Kept Down, Left Out: Domestic Workers and the Unfulfilled Promise of the New Deal • 147 II. STATUS: THE NEXUS OF RACE, GENDER, POVERTY, AND IMMIGRANT STATUS • 150 A. Women of Color, Immigration, and the Altered Demographicsof Domestic Work • 150 B. Status and Abuse: How Immigration and Race Shape Domestic Workers'Experiences • 152 III. "LIKE ONE OF THE FAMILY": DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AND VIOLENCE AGAINST DOMESTIC WORKERS • 156 A. Dependency . 158 B. Isolation . 160 C. Living-In: Proximity to Abuse, Family Connections, and Domestic Space • 163 D. Legal Responses to Abuse: Indifference and Exclusion • 172 IV. THE POLITICS OF PRIVILEGED WOMEN: MARSHALLING THE RESOURCES OF THE VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN MOVEMENT . 178 J.D. 2002, Yale Law School. Law Clerk to Judge Marsha S. Berzon, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The author wishes to thank Noah Zatz, Nikolai Slywka, Professor Judith Resnik, Professor Reva Siegel and editors at the Michigan Journalof Gender & Law for reading and commenting on drafts of this article. MICHIGAN JOURNAL OF GENDER & LAW [Vol. 9:131 A. Expanding Local Domestic Violence Services and Outreach . 180 B. Domestic Work and Nationaland Global Efforts to Address Violence Against Women • 182 V. THE LIMITS OF CURRENT LEGAL PROTECTIONS • 183 A. Nonenforcement and Underenforcement • 185 B. Inabilityfor TraditionalEmployment Law to Accountfor Harms Experienced by Domestic Workers on the Job • 187 VI. CHANGE STARTS AT HOME: RETHINKING DOMESTIC LABOR RELATIONS . 188 A. Privileged Women and Feminist Struggle in the Home: The Casefor Abolition of Hired Domestic Work • 189 B. What About Domestic Workers?: Re-Configuring Domestic Work • 193 1. Putting Workers First: Do Domestic Workers Really Want Domestic Work Abolished? • 194 2. Getting Real: The Necessity of Domestic Work . 197 3. Reforming the Relationship: Toward Real Employer-Employee Relations • 199 C. A BroaderMovementfor Domestic Change: De-PrivatizingCaretaking Labor • 201 CONCLUSION . 204 INTRODUCTION Historically and currently, the workplace for many women, par- ticularly immigrant women and women of color, has been someone else's home. What happens to basic workplace rights, such as the right to be free from sexual harassment, rape, and physical abuse, when one's paid work experience is interwoven with someone else's home life? While feminists and to some extent the public at large have identified sexual harassment as a problem in American workplaces, mainstream examination of workplace discrimination against women seldom ven- tures into the domestic realm, where many of society's lowest status and poorest women work. Throughout the history of domestic service in the United States, women who make their living by working in other people's homes have been particularly and specially subject to sexual harassment and physical, 2002] DOMESTIC VIOLENCE PARADIGMS sexual, and psychological abuse. For domestic workers,' workplace har- assment and abuse is "domesticized"-it occurs in the privacy of the home. Thus, the abuse and harassment suffered often looks like "domes- tic violence"-violence that is generally understood to occur between intimate partners in the private realm-yet also reflects the circum- stances and conditions of low wage, marginal work that is systematically excluded from legal protections and benefits and deeply segregated by race, ethnicity, immigration status, and gender. This Article argues that the immense problem of on-the-job abuse experienced by domestic workers demands a multifaceted plan of attack. draw upon the capacities, strengths, The proposed responses specifically 2 and resources of women, particularly comparatively privileged women, as both activists and employers of domestic workers. By describing the circumstances of domestic work in the United States from the nation's inception to the present, Part I demonstrates the prevalence and intrac- tability of on-the-job physical and sexual abuse and argues that other women, as employers of domestic workers, have historically played a complex role in participating in, condoning, or failing to acknowledge this abuse. Part II asserts that the legal and socioeconomic contexts of contemporary domestic work reflect the prevalence of immigrant women of color in the contemporary domestic workforce and the unique challenges they face as workers in the U.S. Part III examines the present-day incidence of harassment and violence against domestic workers-as revealed through newspaper accounts, interviews with do- mestic workers, and case law-and analyzes common threads of experience in these narratives. Based on these findings, this Part con- tends that physical and sexual abuse suffered by many domestic workers combines elements of workplace harassment with characteristics typical of "domestic violence," making this abuse more challenging to combat than "standard" workplace harassment. Because of the commonalities between domestic violence and vio- lence against domestic workers, Part IV argues that privileged women, who have traditionally been active as funders, social workers, lobbyists, lawyers, and volunteers in the movement to stop violence against wide 1. For the purposes of this article, domestic work is defined broadly to include a range of remunerated household-related labor performed by typically female workers in residences that do not belong to them or their relatives. Common tasks include: childcare, care of sick or elderly persons, cleaning, cooking, errand running, and other household chores. 2. My use of the term "privileged women" throughout this piece refers generally to middle and upper-class women, especially those with sufficient income to hire do- mestic workers. MICHIGAN JOURNAL OF GENDER & LAW [Vol. 9:131 women, should focus their efforts beyond violence between intimate partners to the problems of abuse and violence faced by domestic work- ers. Although policy advocacy is an important part of the strategy to improve conditions for domestic workers, Part V argues that the legal regimes potentially useful to victims of workplace abuse or harassment are not practically accessible to many domestic workers. The present exclusion of domestic workers from the protective labor and anti- discrimination laws that might help them to address job-related abuse reflects some of the same notions of privacy and sanctity of family that served to keep domestic violence hidden from effective intervention for so long. Even if domestic worker problems were more broadly addressed by existing labor and anti-discrimination protections, many factors spe- cific to domestic workers' workplace and societal experience make it less likely that traditional employment law safeguards would adequately pro- tect them. Given the limits of labor and employment law as tools for improv- ing conditions for domestic workers, Part VI proposes non-legal strategies to combat the problem of violence faced by domestic workers. These strategies-collective and individualized in approach-recognize the relative privilege of the women most likely to employ domestic workers. More privileged women, who are often primary employers of domestic workers and are likely to supervise and communicate with them, have a substantial role to play in the prevention of sexual, physi- cal, and other abuse of domestic workers. Part VI asserts that domestic workers' right to freedom from abuse in the workplace can most imme- diately and realistically be won not only through self-organizing by domestic workers, but also by support, awareness, and a new commit- ment on an individual level by comparatively privileged women to become better actors in their personal lives. Women must become not only better employers, but-in what sounds like a sexist throwback, but, as I shall explain, is not-"better" mothers