Intersecting Oppressions: Racial-Ethnic Stratification in Domestic Work and Implications for Identity-Based Organizing

Tony Robinson
Jessie Dryden
Heather Gomez

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DOI: 10.2190/WR.16.2.d

Abstract

This article reports on a survey of 410 Colorado domestic workers, which demonstrates that race/ethnicity and national origin are more powerful predictors of workplace oppression than gender or class. An "intersectionality" framework explores how a hierarchy of oppressions divides female domestic workers from their female employers, and from each other, suggesting challenges to domestic worker organizing along gender or class lines, in that both professional women and white domestic workers benefit from racialized hierarchies within domestic work. These findings suggest associational "identity politics" organizing as a productive strategy to highlight the unique experiences of racially and ethnically subordinate domestic workers and to build on existing community networks of nonwhite immigrant workers, thus establishing an identity-based foundation of mutual strength and political power from which domestic women of color can reach out to build majoritarian alliances for change.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.