The Mothering Maid: A Worker Interview with Sharon Rodriguez Interview: Interviewer: Hi Sharon, I would like for you to tell me your age? Also, where are you from? Sharon: Hello, I am 34. I am from Toronto. Interviewer: What is your ethnicity/race? And, if you would be so kind, tell me a little bit about your family and your educational background. Sharon: I am Puerto Rican. My family immigrated to Toronto in the late 1980s. I was around 6 years old when we first came to Canada. My father was a factory worker. My mother was a domestic maid. I am currently a mother of two children—two boys ages 10 and 12. I have a secondary school education. Interviewer: What is your current job? Sharon: I work for a cleaning service in the Toronto area. …show more content…
I clean rooms at various major hotels. I clean the floors; make the beds, and clean the bathrooms. Interviewer: What are you reasons for working? How do you feel about your job? Sharon: I am currently divorced. I was left to care for my children, and I need to provide income for my family. My feelings about my job? I think it is a tough job. I have to work long hours. It is a dirty job. However, I am grateful for the work. Interviewer: What are your working conditions? Do you get along with your boss? Sharon: My working conditions are satisfactory. We have cleanliness guidelines and we are very thorough and professional. However, my boss is very hard on us. She often pressures us to work longer hours—even though she knows I have children. However, I do get along with my co-workers. Some of them are my friends. Interviewer: What do you enjoy about your work? What do you not enjoy? Sharon: I really enjoy the company of my female co-workers—they are also Puerto Rican. We work as a unit. We like to joke around and have fun when the cleaning schedules are a little slower than usual. However, our boss likes to show up periodically on the job and attempt to burden us with extra work or chores. I think she likes to boss us around. That is not very much fun. Interviewer: What are you responsibilities at home? What type of work do you do there? Sharon: I usually work second or third shift, so that I can make sure that my boys get to school.
I can also see them after school when time permits. I have to clean the home, make their meals, and make sure they do their homework. Interviewer: How is the work you do in the home organized? Sharon: Well, I usually do most of the cleaning, but my sons are getting older. My oldest son is now doing some of the chores, such as cleaning the bathroom. What a relief that is! (laughing). He is also helping with some of the meals. I had to do all of the domestic work before they were old enough to help out. Interviewer: How do you balance all of this work? Sharon: To be honest, I do not always keep my home as clean as I want it to be. I really miss seeing my children in the evening hours. I am often very tired and stressed out. Sometimes I work 12 hours a day. Interviewer: What changes would you like to see for single working mothers? Sharon: I would like to see more state assistance, such as child day care for working mothers. I would like to see the state make the father more responsible for raising children. However, my mother and other members of the extended family help me out when they can. Interviewer: What are your views of …show more content…
workingwomen? Sharon: I respect them a great deal. This is not an easy thing to do. I think it takes great strength to work and raise a family. I think women need to advocate for working mothers, especially in terms of government assistance. Interviewer: What are your views pay equity and the economy? Sharon: The economy is in terrible condition, but many of our clients in the hotel business are doing well, so I work. I feel that cleaning maids should get paid a lot more than what they do—considering all of the messes that they clean in some of these rooms. I know that some corporate cleaning businesses—usually managed and operated by men—get paid a lot more than we do. Women need to be treated more fairly in this business. Interview Report: This interview provided important insight into the working conditions of single working mothers in the cleaning/maid sector of the economy.
Sharon’s experiences are not unique for women working in this industry, which identify problems with pay equity, authoritarian managers, and the lack of support needed to raise a family as part of her unpaid work in the home. Sharon’s status as a first generation Puerto Rican immigrant defines the marginalization of women in the white hegemonic culture of Anglo-European society in the Toronto area: “By and large, migrant workers belong to a hidden work force tucked away in the domestic work sector” (Ehrenreich and Hochschild, 150). In this way, Sharon must endure the daily marginalization of racial subjugation and lower status in the Canadian workforce due to her immigrant status. I found that many of the women that Sharon worked with were also Puerto Rican, which reveals the dominant role of immigrant labor in the Hispanic community in the hotel cleaning business. This often results in lower wages due to immigrant status: “The positioning of women as secondary immigrants and as lower paid immigrants has consequences on their well-being” (Guo and Lange, 255). In this manner, Puerto Ricans endure a great of ethnic, and sex-/gender manipulation in the Canada workforce. In many ways, the racial and gender issues related to immigrant labor issues are a barrier to pay equity and better job opportunities: “This intersectional approach
interweaves race, class, gender, and other axes of power and inequality that deeply affect the lives of immigrant women” (Flores-Gonzalez, 10). These are important aspects of Sharon’s story that I found pertinent to the racial, ethnic, and gender-based aspects of “the mothering maid” in Canadian working life. Certainly,. Many of these theoretical aspects of feminist ideology, gender bias, and racial/ethnic undertones of Sharon’s experiences define major challenges to creating a more equitable working environment for working mothers that do not have the resources or the time to care for their children in this type of economy. In terms of family life, Sharon’s unpaid domestic work defines the continued struggles of women to effectively raise children in the home. Sharon was unable to be with her children on a regular basis, and she also tended to do house work when she was not working at her job: “Those in paid employment during the week tend to catch up on household work on the weekend” (Duffy et al, 149). More so, Sharon had to rely on her mother and other family members to help out in the home when she was working. This defines the extremely difficult balance of raising children and working full time as a stressful burden in her life: “They have to rely on her husband or mother to provide child care” (Duffy and Pupo, 121). In many other cases, the pressure to conform to acceptable levels of parenting is a major problem for single working mothers, since they are often criticized for not being able to properly care for their children. For instance, sick children provide an extra burden for working mothers, which is part of a system that does not understand the plight of mothering in these circumstances: “Medical personnel are repeatedly critical of a mother of six for her failure to visit one of the children in the hospital” (Baines et al, 255). In this manner, Sharon faces tremendous obstacles in the balancing of work and family life. Sharon is not a neglectful mother, but a mother that is forced to work in order to provide shelter and financial assistance to the home.
Since the Industrial Revolution in the United States of America, working conditions for women and minorities have not been given equal pay or top positions in the work place. Women being degraded by the men in charge, and minorities constantly at odds with one another so they will not form a Union. Such things keep those with low-status in the job in line, and not feel they are equal to the ones in charge. People from other countries are in search for a better life elsewhere, and take the risk of going to the United States illegally to seek out the American Dream. The articles Working at Bazooms by Meika Loe and At a Slaughterhouse, Some Things Never Die by Charlie LeDuff deal with the working conditions for women and minorities. Workers in both articles have to deal with having terrible working conditions, harassment in the workplace, low-status within the job, and the constant fear of job loss.
Canadian workplaces today seem to be a fairly diverse place, with a blend of many religions, ethnicities, and genders present. However, although people preach affirmative action and melting pots in current times, many inequality and power issues still abound. One strikingly noticeable example is gender discrimination. Women in the workforce face many challenges like smaller wages, harassment, male privilege in hiring or promotions, and lack of support when pregnant or raising children. One half of the planet is women, and it can be assumed the same for Canada, but they still face judgment at work because they lack the authority to dispute against big corporations or even their male supervisor. It cannot be argued that Canadian women’s status has worsened over the past hundred years, of course, thanks to feminism and activism. However, their status is not as high as it could be. Women as a group first started fighting for workplace equality during the second wave of feminism, from the 1960s to the 1990s. Legislation was approved during the second wave to try to bring gender equality to the workplace. Feminists both collided and collaborated with unions and employers to ensure women received fair treatment in an occupation. Quebec had the same issues, only the province approached the conflict differently than English Canada with its own unique viewpoint. It became clear that women were entering the workplace and did not plan on leaving. Second-wave feminism in Canada shifted power from the government and businesses to women in order to try to bring equality, although the discrimination never completely disappeared.
Teelucksingh, C., & Edward-Galabuzi, G. (2005). C. Teelucksingh & G. Edward-Galabuzi (Eds.), Working Precariously: The impact of race and immigrants status on employment opportunities and outcomes in CanadaToronto: The Canadian Race Relations Foundation.
. Describe your culture. Include things like place of birth, where you were raised, family structure, educational experiences, and career history. What else needs to be included?
When we look at the history of women’s paid employment in Canada, we can see that society has come a long way. Previously, women’s work was in the home, in the private sphere. Her work consisted of taking care uniquely of the home and the children. Rarely, would we see women working for a wage expect for poor women; only because, their families needed the income. Mainly, the only jobs that were available for women were domestic service, a job that relates to the private sphere of the home. People believed that if a woman had paid employment, she was taking away a paycheck from a man, or she would become too manly.
People who are part of the Haitian-American culture, like myself, are either born in Haiti and moved to the U.S. and have assimilate to the American culture or were born in the U.S. and have parent who were originally from Haiti. I was born in Haiti and raised in the U.S. I can relate to other people, female and male, who were also born in Haiti and have moved to the U.S at a young age. Members
Before the outbreak of World War I women could rarely get jobs, the role of a woman was to stay home and take care of her husband and children. It was when World War I broke out, that working women became a normal sight . Unfortunately, when World War I was over, women were expected to return and resume their role of taking care of their family. Then the Great Depression broke out, and women were still expected to stay at home, even though it would have been advantageous for them to be working with their husbands. When World War II broke out women were once again called upon to work in factories, and just like the end of World War I, returning veterans wanted their jobs back . It was still not accepted by the majority of Canadian men for women to work. Job aspects were looking down for women, by 1946 the rate of women's participation in the labour force had dropped to Depression levels , but since women’s contribution in World War II had been so impactful, a feminist movement started to occur; married women began entering the labo...
The purpose of this assignment was to interview someone who is more than 30 years of age and who is of a different race than oneself. Research on the person being interviewed ethnic background had to be conduct, in addition to, materials covered in class and previous experiences were compiled into 7-10 open ended questions that were discussed during the interview. Below you would see the seven interview questions that were discussed, the answers given, and a biographical piece that bring everything together.
The first person I had interviewed was my current roommate, Eric Liu, 19. He is a sophomore majoring in Computer Science from Chino Hills, California and is of Taiwanese descent. Eric Liu was also
Racial discrimination in the workplace has been a persistent theme in Canada’s history as well as present-day times. The occurrence of actions and attitudes that impose a sense of one being less equal than another on the basis of one’s race in Canada’s workplace inhibits both our nation’s ability to move forward as well as strengthen unification within our country. The belief in a more egalitarian society, where one’s race and ethnic background have little to no impact on employees (or potential employees) standings within the job market, would seemingly be reinforced by the majority of Canadians, who consistently show support for Canada’s multicultural identity. Couple that with the noticeable strides Canada has made in the past several decades through legislation, in order to eliminate discriminatory practices and actions within the workplace, and one would likely assume that racial discrimination within the workplace is largely a concern of the past. However, current research supports the argument that the level of which racial discrimination occurs today is increasing, and as such it persists to be a key problem in the current workplace of the nation. In the workplace, racial discrimination is often seen with regard to uneven access to jobs, unfair selection and promotion criteria (as well as access to the means in order to meet this criteria), and workplace harassment. This paper compares similar findings of two articles; the first, Racial inequality in employment in Canada, as was published in the Canadian Public Administration (CPA), and the second, What Are Immigrants’ Experiences of Discrimination in the Workplace?, published by the Toronto Immigrant Employment Data Initiative (TIEDI).
Firstly, according to Reskin (1993), the notion of occupational segregation is the understanding that men and women are guided into different professional jobs and responsibilities. This notion is based on society’s stereotypical viewpoints of what a man’s jobs are and what a female’s job is. In the occupational field, men are often holding superior roles than woman (Reskin, 1993). It is evident that occupational segregation is still existent in contemporary society; females are still tolerating occupational segregation in the workplace environment. This notion can be supported by Gazso (2004) according to his literature about workplace inequality, it is distinct that Canadian men still inhabit superior employment statuses and greater waged positions than women, men are
More and more women work outside and inside the home. The double demands shouldered by these women pose a threat to their physical health. Whether you are an overworked housewife or an exhausted working mother the chances are that you are always one step behind your schedule. No matter how hard women worked, they never ended up with clean homes. Housewives in these miserable circumstances often became hysterical cleaners. They wore their lives away in an endless round of scouring, scrubbing, and polishing. The increased strain in working women comes from the reality that they carry most of the child-rearing and household responsibilities. According to social trends (1996), women always or usually do the washing in 79 percent of cases and decide the menu 59 percent of the time. Picking up the children at school or doing grocery shopping are just a few of the many typical household-tasks a woman takes on every day.
healthy may be time consuming for families that have kids who participate in school or church
2. Who are you? What is your background? What is your culture? What type of