My Family’s Slave

My parents were born and have lived in Pakistan for their entire childhood up to adulthood. They then moved to the United States, where I was born and have lived for my entire life.

On occasion, I visited my parent's home in Pakistan, although the trips became increasingly scarce as grandparents passed (now all four are gone).

The house has always had domestic workers present, a single family. The first few times a maid, who we called Maacy whose children went to a nearby school and whose husband would work nearby.

Her family was among the lower classes of the country, and her salary brought her and her children opportunities she could never otherwise have had. I remember talking with her in the small room that was her quarters; sometimes I would help her with her work.

On later visits, she had left and another family, whose father served as the household driver occupied the same space. One time, I saw the previous maid attending a gathering that was taking place. She recognized me immediately, sharing an embrace and leaving me on my way.

Due to all of them having an estimated 0.018% in slavery, which seems kind of arbitrary so they should really mark that as some sort of minimal slavery standard rather than make it look like an estimate actually based on the country.

Site seems pretty good overall but is missing a hard facts and figures section to go alongside the nice graphical interface. They appear to offer a pdf report but they wanted me to request access to get it.

Yes, I've seen families in Malaysia and Singapore that really treated their housekeeper badly. In a lot of cases, they are not allowed to go out of the apartment either because of potential pregnancy or because they are scared of the housekeeper stealing things from them.

They bring housekeepers from Indonesia and pay them very little. The housekeepers have to work a lot of hours and are pretty much treated as slaves. Often, the housekeepers are not allowed to eat at the same table, they have to eat after everyone has eaten, they don't sleep in a proper room but rather in a storage room.

At least, there's a contract and they do get money at the end but it's really a hard life and hardly more freedom than being a prisoner.

It always shocked me when I saw people that I thought were educated and friendly treat their housekeepers this way.

>we could as a society pay (women) people for emotional labor

They already get paid for emotional labor with emotional reward.

>we could choose to economically value teachers and nurses instead of economically devaluing "feminine" roles

Maybe you could stop being sexist and calling things like education and nursing "feminine."

>in order to end professional segregation

If you can point out actual instances of sexism in professions I'll be happy to back you up. Differential outcomes is not sufficient evidence of sexism. There are sexist people out there, and I'll be happy to metaphorically march alongside you against any of them.

>it's complicated, and testosterone may even be a disability in a sense

LOL, testosterone is a disability? According to you testosterone lets one gender "win" so it sounds like estrogen would be the disability, right?

>, but many of the differences between genders are not biological so much as social constructs that re-enforce constructed economic inequality.

Maybe money isn't the most important thing in the world? Maybe instead of complaining that there aren't more women at the top of the income food chain, we should be asking why any men at all are willing to work themselves to death to get there? Maybe women enjoy better lives than men because they realize earlier on that it's our connections and family that matters the most in life and they live their lives accordingly while men generally don't figure that out until much later in life. Maybe the reason why reported happiness among women has been on the decline since we wrote all these laws encouraging families to break up and shoving women into the shitty corporate ladder lifestyle men have been on for longer should tell us something about life.

Degrees of Lola...

I bet if you peek your head in the kitchen of your top 5 favorite restaurants, you'll find someone on the dishwashing or cleaning staff who is an immigrant and signs over most, if not all, of their paycheck to a "sponsor" here who looks after them. Gives them a place to stay, helps them with language barriers, etc. Or if you know of anyone who has done a mail-order-bride-type thing...

While you may not interact with these people, I bet you see them in your day-to-day life.