The resurgence of paid domestic workers at the intersection of gender, class and racialized inequality

In the context of increasing women’s employment and international migration flows in Western Europe, this paper argues that the recent resurgence of paid domestic work is an strategic location to look at the intersection of gender, class and racialized inequalities. Drawing on quantitative survey analyses and interview data from Spain, where there has been a dramatic increase in the number of paid domestic workers, I propose a theoretical framework to understand the link between the resurgence of paid domestic work and the broader structure of complex inequality. I suggest that the paid domestic sector provides a mechanism by which the with-in household gendered structure of paid/unpaid work is reproduced through social class and ethnicized divisions, which in turn enlarge inequalities between families and further exclude migrant women. I unpack this argument in two sections. First, I examine how the employment of paid domestic workers affects the gender division of paid and unpaid work within individual families. My results indicate that the growing legitimacy of paid domestic labor not only does not advance gender equality but may also hinder additional steps in that direction, further stalling a gender revolution by discouraging efforts to change men’s careers and domestic work strategies. Second, I consider the implications of this growing paid domestic sector for inequality among families. My results suggest that the paid domestic sector reproduces but also exacerbates inequalities among social classes, because it is increasingly related to women’s paid work and upward income mobility within dual-earner families. These analyses reveal how the massive change in women’s employment and reemergence of paid domestic workers is transforming and affecting social inequality among families in ways directly linked to class, gender and racialized inequalities both within the household and in the labor market.