Chinar Mehta

“White women—feminists included—have revealed a historical reluctance to acknowledge the struggles of household workers. They have rarely been involved in the Sisyphean task of ameliorating the conditions of domestic service. The convenient omission of household workers’ problems from the programs of “middle-class” feminists past and present has often turned out to be a veiled justification—at least on the part of the affluent women—of their own exploitative treatment of their maids.

In 1902 the author of an article entitled “A Nine-Hour Day for Domestic Servants” described a conversation with a feminist friend who had asked her to sign a petition urging employers to furnish seats for women clerks.

“The girls,” she said, “have to stand on their feet ten hours a day and it makes my heart ache to see their tired faces.”
“Mrs. Jones,” said I, “how many hours a day does your maid stand upon her feet?”
“Why, I don’t know,” she gasped, “five or six I suppose.”
“At what time does she rise?”
“At six.” “And at what hour does she finish at night?”
“Oh, about eight, I think, generally.”
“That makes fourteen hours …”
“… (S)he can often sit down at her work.”
“At what work? Washing? Ironing? Sweeping? Making beds? Cooking? Washing dishes? … Perhaps she sits for two hours at her meals and preparing vegetables, and four days in the week she has an hour in the afternoon. According to that, your maid is on her feet at least eleven hours a day with a score of stair-climbings included. It seems to me that her case is more pitiable than that of the store clerk.”

My caller rose with red cheeks and flashing eyes. “My maid always has Sunday after dinner,” she said.
“Yes, but the clerk has all day Sunday. Please don’t go until I have signed that petition. No one would be more thankful than I to see the clerks have a chance to sit …”
― Angela Y. Davis, Women, Race & Class