Maids and Madams

Welcome to the Maids and Madams Project on Domestic Service Work and Immigration sponsored by the Brooklyn College Women’s Studies Program and the Shirley Chisholm Center for Research on Women. This site provides information about our campus activities from March 6-8, 2007. In addition, we make available a host of on-line and other resources related to domestic service work. It also suggests ways you can become involved in this issue.

Domestic service work is on the rise globally and locally. Increasingly, women in less developed countries are migrating to more developed parts of the world to provide care work. Often forced to leave their families because of shrinking job opportunities and low pay in their home countries, they go in search of a wage adequate enough to send remittances home to help alleviate excruciating poverty. In their host countries they are filling an essential labor role of housework and child and elder care as middle-class women increasingly enter the job market. The result is frequently a relationship fraught with a power imbalance, paternalism, and few legal or economic protections for the employees. As a result domestic workers from South Africa, to Sri Lanka, to Los Angeles have begun to organize and speak out for labor rights and basic human dignity. Here in New York City, Domestic Workers United has been at the forefront of a movement to offer labor protections, adequate wages, and contractual agreements between workers and employers. We invite you to join us in thinking, reading, and learning about the plight of domestic workers.

Premilla Nadasen, Endowed Chair, Women’s Studies Program
Mojubaolu Okome, Coordinator, Women’s Studies Program
Patricia Antoinello, Shirley Chisholm Center for Research on Women

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Schedule of Events:

Cultural Event
Tuesday, March 6, 12:15 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. in the Alumni Lounge, SUBO

Performance by Faith Nolan, Canadian folk singer
Student dramatic readings

Moderated by Pauline Bullen, Brooklyn College

Panel Discussion: Global Perspectives On Domestic Work
Wednesday, March 7, 12:15 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. in the Tanger Auditorium, Library

"Maid or Madam? From a Domestic Worker to a Celebrity: Reading the Life of Baby Halder" - Swapna Banerjee, Brooklyn College
"From Muchachas to Trabajadoras: Domestic Servants in Latin America" - Nara Milanich, Barnard College
"Migrant Domestic Labor and the Neo-Liberal State " - Rhacel Salazar Parrenas, University of California, Davis

Film Screenings
Wednesday, March 7, 2:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. in the Tanger Auditorium, Library

When Mother Comes Home for Christmas Directed by Nilita Vachani, who will be available for a discussion following the film 2:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
What Could You Do with a Nickel? 4:00 p.m. – 4:45 p.m.
Maid in America 4:45 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.

Roundtable: Domestic and Immigrant Workers Organize in the U.S.
Thursday, March 8, 12:15 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. in the Tanger Auditorium, Library

Eileen Boris, Professor and Hull Chair, University of California
Domestic Workers United, New York City
Lilliam Juarez, Workplace Project, Long Island

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Book Excerpts

Like One of the Family: Conversations From a Domestic's Life by Alice Childress (Beacon Press, 1986)
Servants of Globalization: Women, Migration and Domestic Work by Rhacel Salazar Parreñas (Stanford University Press, 2001)

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Project Sponsors

Women's Studies Program, in cooperation with the
Shirley Chisholm Center for Research on Women
The University Affirmative Action Committee
The Brooklyn College Office of Affirmative Action, Compliance, and Diversity
The Carol Zicklin Chair
The Women's Center
The Wolfe Institute

Also very special thanks to all the students who helped with this project:
Lindsay Cain
Glenda Charleus
Stephanie Dixon
Ashley Drewes
Cat Gironda
Talya Husbands-Hankin
Mel King
Theresa Mazzaferro

For more information, please call Premilla Nadasen in the Women's Studies Program at 718.951.5476 or stop by and visit us in 1207 New Ingersoll.