Crossroads of Empowerment: The Organisation of Women Domestic Workers in Brazil

Abstract

The organisation of women domestic workers in Brazil reveals a process of collective empowerment at work in a society where gender, race, and class inequalities intersect, giving rise to complex mosaics. Analysing processes of empowerment in these circumstances calls for abandoning universalising visions of women and recognising differences and inequalities beyond gender in multiracial and multicultural societies. Women domestic workers face class contradictions in establishing harmonious relationships with women bosses, who are also participants as workers in unions and other political spaces. This contradiction creates difficulties in constructing a common agenda for the advancement of domestic workers' labour rights. This article draws on participatory research with women domestic workers in the city of Salvador in north-east Brazil, and aims to analyse some of the consequences of the articulation of gender, race, and class inequalities in their lives, how these inequalities obstruct women's pathways of empowerment and what women domestic workers are doing to seek greater rights, recognition and justice.

“Foi difícil, mas sempre falo que nós somos guerreiras” – O movimento das trabalhadoras domésticas entre a marginalidade e o empoderamento

“…A maior transformação que ocorre dentro do movimento talvez seja a percepção que as domésticas têm si mesmas, levando-as a um processo de empoderamento. Através da militância, elas percebem não só o valor da profissão de doméstica, mas o valor de si como pessoas, e conseguem transformar os elementos de opressão de gênero, raça e classe em armas de luta coletiva (BERNARDINO-COSTA, 2013;GONÇALVES, 2010;HILL COLLINS, 2000). O movimento traz novas oportunidades e novas responsabilidades: viagens, formação, participação de comissões parlamentares, em Brasília, negociação com o governo e com a OIT, em Genebra.…”

Energy for empowerment: the role of energy in women’s organising and empowerment in urban and peri-urban South Africa

“…People enacting 'power under' express agency through apathy and despair, attempts at domination and in-fighting, demonising oppressors or populism (Wineman 2003). 'Power under' is a reminder that power is complex and that marginalised people can use power in ways that are exclusive or violent (see Goncalves 2014, for a discussion of how women can disempower one another). While theorising feminist forms of power is important from a normative viewpoint, analytically attention must be given to all the forms of power that women exercise.…”