Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 7280

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Women's Studies International Forum

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Intersectionality and female domestic workers' unions in Brazil

Joaze Bernardino-Costa
Department of Sociology, University of Braslia, Campus Universitrio Darcy Ribeiro, ICC Centro, Asa Norte, CEP. 70.910-900 Braslia/DF, Brazil

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Available online 29 January 2014

s y n o p s i s
The paper uses the concept of intersectionality to explore the central role played by the categories of
race, class and gender in the biographies of female domestic workers in Brazil. While showing how
these categories are implicated in the inequalities and subalternization experienced by these
actors, the paper also reveals how female domestic workers have appropriated them to promote
themselves politically as a professional class. Adopting a historical viewpoint, the second part of the
paper shows the formation of a public agenda for female domestic workers' unions and their
negotiation with class-based, feminist and black movements in Brazil. It concludes by showing that
unionized domestic workers have developed an original form of feminism that combines aspects
taken from all these movements.
2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction
Domestic labor in Brazil is a symbol of gender, class and
race inequalities, as the majority of the domestic workers in
Brazil are black lower-class women. According to a recent
census, 7.2 million people are professional domestic workers,
93% of whom are female; 61.6% of those females are black
and 38.4% are white. The over-representation of black female
domestic workers can get even more evident: 12% of white
women with a job are domestic workers; the rates increase to
21% for black women (IPEA, 2011).
The existence of a domestic labor force means that there are
high-income families with the means to pay another person's
wages. On the other hand, it means a service that compensates
the lack of basic public service (daycare, for instance). Because of
that, families with a higher income are able to overcome the lack
of some public services by privatizing them, by hiring private
services. Such economic inequalities are connected to both
gender and race naturalization. Domestic labor is naturally seen
as a woman's job and, as such, not worthy of a fair pay, as it
supposedly does not involve special skills. On the other hand,
due to Brazil's colonial history, domestic labor is also seen as the
black woman's natural place.
One of the most evident consequences of those families'
private solutions for the lack of public services is the fragile
state regulation concerning female domestic workers and their
0277-5395/$ see front matter 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2014.01.004

employers. Indeed, female domestic workers have recently

enjoyed legal equalization compared to other jobs. However,
there isn't reliable supervision for domestic labor. As a consequence, only one-third of the domestic workers in Brazil work
under legal conditions. Therefore, the relationship between
domestic workers and their employers shows not only noncompliance of rights, but also a naturalized code of conduct in which
gender, class and race inequalities make domestic workers
susceptible to disempowerment and a violation of rights.
Inside their employers' home, a fragile state regulation
sets the relationship between the female domestic worker
and their employers. In the public sphere, on the other hand,
their unions actively struggle for better state regulation.
Therefore, the female domestic worker unions have tried for
years to create a partnership with the black movement, the
feminist movement and other class unions in order to
improve their rights. In this case, the axes of gender, race
and class power, unlike what happens inside their employers' home, mobilize for democracy and the domestic
workers' empowerment.
This paper aims to explore two dimensions of domestic
labor: the face-to-face relationship between the domestic
worker and their employer, which happens inside the
employers' home, and the female domestic workers' political
mobilization through their unions. Our analysis is based on the
concept of intersectionality. As we will demonstrate, this

J. Bernardino-Costa / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 7280

concept is helpful in understanding the interwoven relationships of diverse axes of power, the most important of which are
race, class and gender, in the production of both subjugation and
political agency. This approach is effective for comprehending
domestic labor in Brazil, as it takes us beyond discourses that
isolate individual markers of difference by dynamically joining
them. We focus on how the axes of gender, race and class power
act in that face-to-face relationship which disempowers the
female domestic worker. On the other hand, we explore how
those same axes of gender, race and class power acted as a tool
for empowerment and democratic mobilization through the
domestic workers' political organizations. Concerning the latter,
such axes of power are mobilized from exchanges among the
domestic workers' political organizations and the feminist and
the black movements, as well as their syndicates. As a result of
this exchange, the female domestic workers have succeeded in
some aspects concerning their profession's regulations.
This article is divided in five parts. The first part describes
our research methodologies. The following part shows the
theories about the concept of intersectionality. It is good to
highlight that such concept may refer to either disempowerment or empowerment. The third and fourth parts use
empirical data and the concept of intersectionality to explain
how the axes of gender, race and class power interact, on the
one hand, to trigger disempowerment in the female domestic
workers' workplace and, on the other hand, to trigger political
mobilization through their unions. Finally, the last part brings
our final considerations.
Methodology: Listening to domestic workers' voices
Based on the main role of the concept of intersectionality, this
article aims to study how gender, race and class dimensions
work in the private sphere, and how it causes disempowerment
and inequality; and, as far as the public sphere is concerned, how
they result in empowerment and democratic mobilization.
The data on which this research is based on was collected
in two different periods, all from unionized domestic workers. In
2006, as part of a research for my doctorate study, I carried
out semi-structured interviews with twenty-three unionized
workers from five out of approximately forty existent unions in
Brazil. Those unions were based in Campinas (So Paulo state),
So Paulo (So Paulo state), Salvador (Bahia state), Recife
(Pernambuco state) and Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro state). I
also interviewed the leaders of the Domestic Workers National
Federation and did some research in the files of each one of those
unions, as well as in documents and resolutions of the domestic
workers' national congresses.1 During my research, I traced the
history of the Santos Domestic Workers Association, which was
the first political association of female domestic workers in
Brazil, founded in 1936. In 2011, I interviewed five domestic
workers of the unions of the New Iguau district (Rio de Janeiro
state) and the Franca district (So Paulo state). Those seven
unions, especially the five from my 2006 research, have been
in charge of the organization of the domestic workers' national
congresses. They are considered the core of the domestic
workers' movement not only because of that, but also because
they give to us a historical glimpse into the domestic workers'
political organizations (Bernardino-Costa, 2007, 2011).
The interviews were carried out in each one of the abovementioned unions and they took 90 min in average. All

73

interviewees were asked questions about their backgrounds,

first job, union affiliation, their union's political struggles,
experience exchanges and cooperation with the black and
feminist movements, as well as with other class unions,
among others. Interestingly, all of them filled out the consent
and confidentiality terms of the University of Braslia. In
2011, however, during my presentation as a special guest in
the 10th National Congress of Domestic Worker, in Recife, the
interviewed domestic workers asked me to list their real
names in my articles when I was to mention the history of their
political organization; their anonymity was to be maintained
only when I was to mention a specific personal history. This
article, thus, follows their request.
From the methodological point of view, one of the guidelines
in this article is the use of what Enrique Dussel (1996) called
ethical listening. That means to ethically recognize the existence
of the ones who were faded and silenced by the hegemonic
episteme. By listening to the domestic workers, we tried to
undermine the power of the hegemonic speech in the Brazilian
society, especially about black women, who are viewed by the
hegemonic episteme as deprived of rationality and therefore
unable to tell their own histories.
Therefore, as we listened to the interviewees, we intended
to deconstruct a Brazilian belief of harmony between white and
black people, and between rich and poor. The idea of Brazilian
society as one that forged harmonious relationships, especially
between whites and blacks, has been propagated over the
course of the nation's history. We question this perspective;
not only does it obscure diverse forms of violence, but it also
fails to ethically listen to both the black and poor populations
of the country. In contrast to such social and racial harmony
speech, the private sphere of the Brazilian society shows the
axes of gender, race and class power moving towards the
disempowerment of the female domestic worker. On the other
hand, as we listen to the domestic workers telling their stories
about their political organization, we do not notice a process of
victimization, but resistance to oppression, exploitation and
the suppression caused by the country's hegemonic speech.
To analyze the relevant data, our arguments were structured around the concept of intersectionality.
A brief discussion of the concept of intersectionality
Especially in the political and academic fields of gender and
race studies, the concept of intersectionality has been employed
to stress the interconnections between certain categories,
including race, gender, class, generation and sexuality.
Two aspects stand out in the use of intersectionality as a
concept: on the one hand, the homogenizing dimension of
various categories such as class, race, sexuality and gender
has been questioned in favor of highlighting intra-class,
intra-gender, intra-sex and intra-race differences. On the
other hand, rather than utilizing an additive logic in which
the axes of subordination simply compound one other, as
in the idea of double or triple discrimination, the concept of
intersectionality focuses on the interaction between two or
more of these axes of power (Brah, 1996, 2006; Brah & Phoenix,
2004; Carneiro, 2003a, 2003b; Collins, 2000; Crenshaw, 2002,
2006; McClintock, 1995; Yuval-Davis, 2012).
In the 1990s, Kimberl Crenshaw, in a dialog with black
feminists on the supposed universalism of woman as a

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J. Bernardino-Costa / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 7280

political category, was largely responsible for popularizing

the concept of intersectionality, and she herself became an
indispensable reference point in discussions of the topic. In her
work, intersectionality is used to describe the way in which
racism, patriarchal relations, class oppression and other axes of
power generate discrimination and inequalities. Crenshaw
(2002, 2006) emphasizes how the intersectionality of race,
class, sexuality and gender are responsible for oppression and
disempowerment. The metaphor of a crossroads allows us to
understand what the author means by this concept. The axes of
power race, gender, sexuality and class overlap and cross
each other. Crenshaw (2002: 177) writes: racialized women
frequently find themselves in a position where racism or
xenophobia, class and gender meet each other. Consequently,
they are liable to be hurt by the intense flux on these roads. A
person subject to intersectionality, following the author's
metaphor, is like a pedestrian at a crossroads, suffering the
damage caused by collisions from multiple directions. Hence,
the concept utilized by Crenshaw shows the disadvantages,
vulnerabilities, oppressions and disempowerment suffered by
women situated at the meeting point of two or more axes of
power. Crenshaw's examples of sexual and domestic violence,
sexual harassment, discrimination and inequalities in terms of
access to jobs and education reveal precisely the dimensions of
oppression and disempowerment implied by the concept of
intersectionality (2002, 2006).
Crenshaw notes that the dynamics of the axes of power
race, class, gender, sexuality, nationality, etc. are not unilateral
in the sense of generating only oppression, since members of
marginalized groups are able to resist and mobilize political
will, individual and collective. The intersectionality approach is
shared by Patricia Hill Collins (2000: 13), who proceeds from the
notion of a dialectic between oppression and activism.
Another author of significant contribution to the discussion of intersectionality is Avtar Brah (1996, 2006). While
drawing attention to the dynamics of oppression, discrimination and exploration in power relations, Brah highlights
the importance placed on the dimensions of activism and
political mobilization in intersectionality. Depending on the
historical context, the difference informing the notion of
intersectionality often leads to more democratic forms of
political agency (2006:16). To understand Brah's position, it
is important to keep in mind that she researched Britain's
black movements in the 1960s and 1970s and became aware
of how the term black was employed as a political category
to mobilize and unite people with African, Caribbean and
South Asian origins in response to their shared experience of
stigmatization, inferiorization and discrimination in work,
education, housing, the legal system and welfare. Initially
taken as a category of subalternization, the concept of
blackness was later used to mobilize colonial subjects who
would never have been previously identified with the term.
Through Brah's research, we become aware that race may have
diverse meanings according to context.
In considering class, race, sexuality and gender as axes of
power, it behooves us to recall Foucault's insights concerning
power. Power is not a property, but a relation. Power relations
alter continually, new conflicts and new points of resistance
spring up all the time, leading to the emergence of new subjects
(Foucault, 1995). Hence, depending on the context, the notion of
intersectionality can be utilized not only to examine negative

effects like oppression and disempowerment, but also to explore

political mobilization.
The concept of intersectionality has the advantage of
allowing us to view two dimensions of power relations: on
the one hand, the production of disempowerment, oppression
and discrimination; on the other, the production of political
agencies, democratic mobilization and political subjects.
The use of this concept also affords us an analysis based on
the interaction of a multitude of axes of differentiation and
power. This concept emphasizes that different dimensions of
social life cannot be analyzed discretely, in search of absolutist
explanations about the processes of power and inequality; on
the contrary, we are reminded of the importance of analyses
that bring together the various existing systems of differentiation in specific local contexts.
Intersectionality becomes an important tool for understanding how discrimination, oppression and domination of
Brazilian domestic workers are produced and stabilized. It also
emerges as an important concept for our comprehension of the
political mobilization of workers in Brazil. Discrimination,
oppression and domination occur primarily in the workplace,
whereas political mobilization operates primarily in the space
delineated by the trade unions representing this professional
category.
Intersectionality between class, race and gender in
the workplace
Revisiting interviews from earlier research on female
domestic workers' unions in Brazil, the explanatory potential
of the concept of intersectionality becomes clear. From the
outset, it is important to stress that the explanatory potential
of intersectionality varies according to the context invoked
by the domestic workers themselves. When the women talk
about their experiences before joining political associations
or unions, the dimension of intersectionality emphasizing
oppression, disempowerment and inequality becomes useful.
But when they discuss their experiences after joining the
unions, the dimension emphasizing agency, empowerment
and political and democratic mobilization comes to the fore.
It is also important to stress that we are not talking about pure
contexts: that is, a context in which intersectionality implies
disempowerment only, and another in which it emerges as a
key element in political mobilization. Rather, I am arguing that,
in any given context, one of these meanings of the concept of
intersectionality prevails over the other without implying the
complete absence of the latter.
Most female domestic workers begin work as children,
recruited from the contingents of poor women with minimal
education who migrate to towns and cities from rural areas.
Their culture, language, dress and race are considered inferior
to those of dominant urban classes. They usually work alone
and sometimes without pay the employers claiming that
they are raising them, as if they were their own children
(Bernardino-Costa, 2011; Chaney & Castro, 1989). Such situations, experienced by domestic workers in Brazil and elsewhere,
especially various Latin American countries, reinforce the fact
that the predominant kind of intersectionality experienced by
these women is one of disempowerment and oppression. In
other words, race, class and gender are experienced in terms of
racism, class discrimination and patriarchy.

J. Bernardino-Costa / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 7280

In their life narratives, domestic workers frequently cite

markers of their race, class and gender identities to explain
the difficulties and hardships of their everyday lives. All the
domestic workers interviewed started to work at an early
age, when they were children, often after they had been
given to the employer's family to be raised, with the promise
that they would be provided with a formal education and
better living conditions. Instead, they faced a life of daily toil,
very different from the employer's promises to their mothers.
The story of one of the women interviewed, aged 66 at the
time of the interview, clearly illustrates the conditions faced
by many domestic workers in Brazil.
Madalene (not her real name), currently affiliated with
the Recife Female Domestic Worker's Union, remembers her
first job as a domestic worker in the northeastern region of
the country in during the 1950s. She, like other children, was
taken in by the employing family with the promise that she
would be treated like one of their child, with access to good
housing and schools. What in fact followed was an experience marked by discrimination, inequality and differentiation. Her job was to clean the house, wash clothes by hand,
iron clothes with a coal iron, and serve breakfast to her
employers. While the family's children went to school, she
had to stay at home and perform physically exhausting work,
without the right to go to school.
Although Madalene participated in the intimate life of the
family, overhearing their conversations, witnessing their moments of joy and sorrow and generating well-being through her
work, her feeling was that she and the other domestic workers
employed in the home were treated like slaves, their humanity
neglected. Her employers seldom talked to her and often talked
about her in her presence, as if she were not there.
The reference Madalene makes to slave labor is not
adventitious. Although it has metaphorical content in this
reference, there is also real evidence that that job retained
concrete traces of slavery, officially banned in Brazil in 1888.
She worked from 6:00 am to 8:00 pm, without remuneration
and was exposed to physical and emotional violence, and
occupied spaces set apart within the home. Similar to the
slavery period, in which the slaves' quarters were isolated
from the overseer's house, Madalene reports that her room
was separate from the employing family's home.
Another female domestic worker, Carla (not her real name),
younger than Madalene, also described working at an early age,
this time in Salvador, also in the Northeast. Although their
experiences took place in different cities and during different
periods of the twentieth century (the 1950s and 1990s), we
can observe similarities in their narratives, including working
unpaid or for unlawful pay, being overworked and the young
age at which they began working.
Carla told her story as follows:
A woman visited my town and asked my mother to let her
raise me. So my mother allowed her to take me away ().
My experience in that job was very long, very harsh and
very sad. I was nine years old and I had to take care of two
children and clean the whole house. So it was very tough.
I didn't have time to study or play. My playtime amounted
to taking care of two children younger than myself. I
looked after them, bathed them, cleaned the house. I even
cooked. I ironed clothes (). My work was very heavy, it

75

was humiliating. I was beaten. They would burn me. He

(the husband) tried to rape me. I started work there when
I was nine years old and left when I was fourteen.
[Carla, twenty-three years old in 2005, afliated to the
Bahia Female Domestic Workers' Union]
Both Madalene's and Carla's narratives describe an everyday experience of exhausting work and denial of freedom,
including sleeping at the workplace and receiving no pay. What
is notable in their life trajectories is that they were both subject
to their employers' will because they started working in
domestic service while they were still children. Madalene's
narrative like those of other interviewees who cannot be
included here for space reasons is also notable for the links
she herself makes between domestic work and slavery: There
was a separate room in the house, in the backyard. It was like the
slaves' quarters. Carla also recalls an argument she had with her
female employer in the 1990s, when the latter remarked that
slavery should never have been abolished in Brazil.
The encounter between two women in the same domestic
space, one the employer and the other the maid, does not mean
that they will inevitably build a relationship of solidarity just
because they are women. Class and race differences frequently
intersect with gender, producing a hierarchical difference in
the positions occupied by women. The fact that such young
children became domestic workers indicates how much class
forces are a determiner of this fate. Class does not operate in
isolation, but rather in combination with race. If it is true that
child domestic labor is an option for poor girls in the Brazilian
society, it is more so for girls who are poor and black.
Class and race are evident not only at the moment of
employment; they operate throughout the new labor relationship. There is a clear distinction between class habitus
and the racial distinctions that become forms of humiliation,
denigration and dehumanization. On the other hand, in this
context of power relations, gender is also a dimension of life
that disempowers these workers, making them vulnerable to
sexual violence.
The interviewees' life narratives are very similar. Whether
they come from Brazil's northeast (Bahia and Recife), or the
southeast (So Paulo and Rio de Janeiro), we come across the
following facts: (a) they begin work as domestic employees
while they are still children; (b) the female employer promises
to raise the child, but she actually exploits her as an unpaid
domestic worker; (c) the women are recruited from poor
families from rural areas; (d) as children, they are obliged
to follow an adult's work routine with no respect for their
physical capacity and well-being; (e) they frequently recount
stories of physical violence, verbal abuse and very often sexual
harassment and violence; (f) their freedom is restricted, the
women are unable to enter and leave their employer's house
whenever they want; (g) they frequently receive no regular
payment; (h) the majority of the women are black (all interviewees were black women).
Examining the interviews, we can note the presence of
multiple axes of disempowerment in their social relationships. The variables of class, gender and race work as markers
of difference, subordinating one woman to the other. Both
Madalene's and Carla's cases show us how the intersectionality
among gender, race and class subdues them. The simple fact
that they are women does not trigger any gender affinity from

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J. Bernardino-Costa / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 7280

their boss' wife, since they are both from different classes
and races. Similarly, Carla and Madalene come from poor,
rural backgrounds, which explain why they became domestic
workers. Finally, their racial origin black women adds up to
the chain of vulnerabilities, completing the process of naturalization that subjected them, as children, to sexual abuse and, as a
consequence, not worthy of wage. Therefore, the concept of
intersectionality shows us the interaction among the various
axes of power. That enables us to analyze the origins of disempowerment, inequalities and domination. Now, the concept
of intersectionality is different from the idea of double and triple
discrimination. In this given case, there is a dynamic process in
which each one of the axes of power applies their own
energy, and those energies are not nullified by one another. All
considered, Madalene and Carla are subjects of the discrimination, disempowerment and oppression caused by the dynamic
energy of each of the analyzed dimensions, all of which act
equally. The explanatory potential of intersectionality is also
significant, as it builds an inter-relationship among a macrocontext affected by a racist, sexist and class-biased speech, and
the domestic workers' life dynamics.
The intensity of the subjugation is directly proportional to
the fact that these domestic workers are describing a period
of their lives when they were still children. Female domestic
workers gradually become subjects in their workplace as
they acquire experience and reach adulthood. They develop
various strategies to reduce their workload, such as performing
tasks slowly, not cleaning the entire house every day, but just
some areas, and negotiating with their employers (Brah, 2006).
However, one of the decisive factors in domestic workers
becoming subjects again is ceasing to live and sleep in
their employers' house. This independence enables them to
re-establish control over their work time and take days off
work for whatever reasons. Some of the reasons for this change
include: (a) recent urban changes in Brazilian cities in which
the maid's quarters have disappeared from the new architectural designs for middle-class residences; (b) a public campaign
by some domestic workers' unions to combat the idea that they
are the family's daughters and simultaneously encourage the
women to find their own home to live in.
For domestic workers, having their own home opens up a
new world, much in the same way as participating in union
activities, since it allows them to build relations based on
solidarity among equals, breaking with the values imposed by
their employers. As we shall see below, the unions comprise a
social space in which the markers of race, class and gender are
seen positively rather than negatively, variables that interact
with each other to empower, building solidarity between
female domestic workers and other social actors that enables
political mobilization. Therefore, unlike the face-to-face relationship between domestic workers and their employers, the
union becomes a place for the construction of a collective
identity, in which the intersectionality among the axes of
gender, race and class power moves towards a democratic
mobilization and the domestic workers' empowerment.
Intersectionality between class, race and gender in the
female domestic workers' unions
Becoming involved in the political activities of a trade
union is a watershed in domestic workers' lives. Unions are

social spaces that rupture the isolation experienced within

the four walls of the employer's house. Moreover, as argued
here, the unions are also spaces in which the typically
hierarchical relations between domestic workers and their
employers are left behind. Today there are approximately
133,000 unionized domestic workers, corresponding to just
2% of all Brazilian domestic workers (IPEA, 2011).
When we move our analysis to the space of unions, we
encounter narratives of democratic mobilization and empowerment of domestic workers, rather than stories of
oppression. Over the years, since the emergence of the first
political organizations of domestic workers, the recognition
of difference on the part of working class and informed
women, as homogeneous categories, has meant the political
empowerment of women. In addition to strengthening the
collective, the union is a space for the restructuring of the
subjectivity of these agents, in which they collectively affirm
their humanity by transcending the sexist, patriarchal and
racist determinations that they face on a day-to-day basis. In
other words, the unions are spaces for the construction of
friendship, affection and attention, where each woman is
recognized as a unique and full individual by her companions
and friends.
The political and social movement of domestic workers
began in 1936 when Laudelina de Campos Melo founded the
Domestic Workers Professional Association in Santos (So
Paulo state). The organization's explicit objective was to
acquire the legal status of a trade union, which would enable
it to negotiate with the Brazilian government and consequently acquire the official recognition and labor rights
already achieved by other professional classes. Although the
denial of labor rights was the recurrent theme of the first
political organization of domestic workers in the country,
it was no coincidence that Laudelina de Campos Melo
(19041991) was a black activist. She had participated in
black organizations in various cities of the Minas Gerais
and So Paulo states in the 1920s and 1930s. In the 1930s,
Laudelina had contact with activists from black associations in So Paulo and was herself an activist with the
Brazilian Black Front (Frente Negra Brasileira, FNB), the
most important black organization in Brazil of the period
(Pinto, 1993). Laudelina was also a member of the Communist
Party, thus able to count on other members' assistance in
writing the statutes of her new association.
In the late 1950s, there was a resurgence of public debate on
the situation of female domestic workers in Brazil, promoted
in particular by black organizations. For instance, the Black
Experimental Theatre (Teatro Experimental do Negro, TEN)
included among its members the actress and domestic worker
Arinda Serafim, who encouraged other domestic workers to
attend TEN's literacy classes and involved them in political
training projects emphasizing their labor rights (Sermog &
Nascimento, 2006). In addition, we should note the public
discussion of a law to regulate the profession and guarantee the
first legal rights for domestic workers (Nascimento, 2003).
Starting in the 1960s, the campaigns run by black organizations in support of domestic workers were given fresh impetus
by the Catholic Church through an organization called Young
Christian Workers (Juventude Operria Catlica, JOC) (Hutchison,
2010). In 1960, the Young Christian Workers promoted the First
National Meeting of Young Female Domestic Workers in the city

J. Bernardino-Costa / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 7280

of Rio de Janeiro. The following year, the JOC also organized the
First Regional Congress of Female Domestic Workers in the city
of Recife, which brought together workers from the states of
Cear, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraba and Pernambuco (Soares,
2002).
It is important to note that as a labor organization, Young
Christian Workers supported workers as a universal and
homogeneous category. Female domestic workers were not
included in the organization's official campaign agenda
though, due to their specific condition, including the lack of
any legal recognition, while the majority of workers in Brazil
already possessed some rights since the 1930s. Despite their
specificity relative to other professional categories, there were
groups of domestic workers at the meetings of Young Christian
Workers. Odete Maria Conceio, one of the founders of the
Professional Association of Female Domestic Workers of Rio de
Janeiro in the 1960s, reported an incompatibility between
domestic workers and the working class, when the latter was
thought of as a homogeneous group. As soon as the domestic
workers recognized their differences vis--vis other workers,
they set out to establish their own associations in order
to take measures concerning issues specific to them: a
professional category not yet recognized by the State, therefore
without rights, formed by black women from the poor working
class.
While the domestic workers' movement gained ground
through dialog with the Catholic Church, Laudelina de Campos
Melo, living in Campinas, So Paulo, founded the Association of
Campinas in the early 1960s. However, instead of the Catholic
Church playing the main role, in Campinas we note a strong
coalition between the black movement, especially Black Experimental Theatre and the Association.
In the 1960s, the female domestic workers' movement
spread across the country as the result of interactions between
the Catholic Church (with its emphasis on the working class
cause), the black movement and the trade unions. Different
female domestic workers' groups and associations allied with
their partners in distinct ways. During this phase of the
domestic workers movement, the class-based interpretation
of the condition of female domestic workers prevailed at the
national level.
This is also the impression we get of the movement on
reading the resolutions produced during the National Congresses
of the 1960s and 1970s. It does not mean that gender and race
issues were absent, but rather that the political mobilization of
domestic workers was centered on being recognized as part of
the working class and consequently winning the same rights as
other workers. Domestic workers were finally recognized by
Brazilian legislation for the first time in 1972, when they
obtained the right to register their employment, take twenty
days' vacation per year and receive basic welfare coverage. This
law represented the successful outcome of the female
domestic workers' struggle and the movement's primary
aim of achieving recognition of these working women as
members of the working class.
It is important to note that although class struggle had been
the recurring theme of much of the domestic worker movement's activism, such as the campaign for domestic employees
to have their own home, racialcolonialist issues were also
present. For example, domestic workers frequently compared
the maid's room in the employer's house to slaves' quarters, the

77

house to the owner's mansion and domestic work to slave labor

(Bernardino-Costa, 2007).
The relationship with working class political organizations
has changed over the decades and had regional variations.
In some cities, partnerships were established between the
domestic workers' unions and other trade unions, while in
other cities there were conflicts and mutual distrust. The same
applies to the feminist movement. The relationship between
female domestic workers and feminist organizations began
with great distrust, since freeing oneself from domestic work
was and still is seen as the precondition for being a
middle-class woman and able to work outside the home.
Although less intense, this distrust between the domestic
workers' union and the feminist movement persists in some
unions. But taking the country as a whole, feminist organizations have evidently become important allies in the domestic
workers' political organization. It should be noted that while
the hegemonic feminist movement is an important partner in
domestic workers' setting forth their political agenda vis--vis
the Brazilian State, there are marked differences between the
demands of the domestic workers' movement and the feminist
movement. Besides the hierarchical differences among female
employers and their employed domestics, the themes of
liberation of feminists from the wealthiest classes often do not
resonate with workers who have other notions of the body,
femininity and motherhood.
Positive productive interaction with the feminist movement
increased following the Fifth National Congress of Female
Domestic Workers, held in the city of Recife in 1985, when the
feminist organization SOS Body (SOS Corpo) helped organize
the Congress. On the national scale, the women's movement
despite lingering wariness became a true partner of the female
domestic workers' movement when it supported their cause
during the drawing-up of the 1988 Brazilian Constitution.
The period between the Fifth National Congress of Female
Domestic Workers in 1985 and the enactment of the 1988
Brazilian Constitution was one of intense mobilization among
female domestic workers. The women visited Brasilia numerous times to pressure members of the national congress to
grant rights to those working in the profession. After the 1988
Constitution the struggle continued led now by the legally
recognized domestic workers' unions since the movement
had obtained just nine of the thirty-four labor rights guaranteed to other workers. From the nine rights, the following ones
are worth mentioning: minimum wage, thirteenth salary,
weekly rest day, paid vacation days, pregnancy license and
retirement.
During this period, we can observe the growing national
influence of the Campinas and Salvador unions. The activism
of these two unions also led to the strengthening of the
position of racial and feminist issues on a national level. This
did not mean that union or class-based approaches vanished
or become devalued, but that new connections were made
between class, race and gender. For this new configuration to
come about, the historical dialog between these two unions
and the black and feminist movements was crucial.
The testimony of Creuza de Oliveira, a founding member
of the Bahia Female Domestic Workers' Union, affiliated to
the Unified Black Movement (Movimento Negro Unificado,
MNU) since 1983, shows how the race-based approach was
internalized by domestic workers:

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J. Bernardino-Costa / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 7280

The partnership between the Unied Black Movement

and our professional group was intensied when I took
part in a meeting in which I asked for support for us from
the black movement. When I rst began to participate, I
hadn't actually been invited, I just turned up. At the start
of the 1980s, the language used in the black movement
was highly academic (). It was difcult for a domestic
worker to understand what they were saying. I knew it
would be difcult for me to understand what they were
saying, but I thought to myself: the language they use is
difcult and I understand almost nothing of what they
say, but I know that the issue concerns me because they
are talking about black people. So regardless of whether
they have PhDs or better economic conditions than me, as
a domestic worker, it concerns me because I'm a black
person too. So I thought the space belonged to me, too,
and I was determined to stay. I stayed and I've participated in the Unied Black Movement for years now.
[(Creuza de Oliveira, founding member of the Bahia
Female Domestic Workers' Union and President of the
Female Domestic Workers' National Federation)]
Creuza de Oliveira calls our attention to the fact that
domestic workers do not adhere unthinkingly to the
discourse and political viewpoint of the black movement;
rather, its race-based approach is critically interpreted and
adjusted to the specific issues faced by female domestic
workers and in particular the life experiences of the black
working class women.
Over the more than seventy years of the domestic
workers' movement's formation, we can see not only the
formation of a resistance movement, but also a movement to
restructure the lives of domestic workers.
This resistance movement is in line with the mobilizing
dimension of the concept of intersectionality, as highlighted
by Avtar Brah (1996). We see in the actions of the 1930s how
domestic workers mobilized a discourse of class and racial
solidarity for the foundation of their first political association.
Perceiving differences between themselves and the country's
middle and urban class, they teamed up with the black
movement of the era for political action. Similarly, race was
employed in the 1950s with the objective of achieving their
first legal gains. However, it was only in the 1960s that the
movement gained a national dimension. Essential to this
were the discourse and political mobilization of the Young
Christian Workers. It is noteworthy that the workers were far
more interested in the political aspects of the organization of
the Catholic Church than in the religious aspects. Some
workers reported to me that their bosses thought that they
were going to the meetings to pray or read the Bible, when in
fact they were involved in a process of political awareness and
activism. The perception of difference between themselves and
other workers is another highlight of that historical moment.
Although they lacked an academic education, the domestic
workers' perception that the working class contained race
and gender aspects also becomes evident in that historical
moment and hence the need for the formation of specific
domestic workers' associations. The interpretations, demands
and political organizations based on gender and race reappear
in the national movement of domestic workers with great
intensity from the 1980s up to the present day. If, from the

1930s to the 1960s, there were coalitions with the black

movement, it was on a regional level, only gaining national
dimension in the 1980s. Initially coalitions with the feminist
movement were productive; although essential for domestic
workers, they were regarded with suspicion for being the
movement of their bosses, whose political agenda did not
represent the issues and demands of a professional category
differentiated by race and economic conditions. Domestic
workers repeatedly said in the 1980s, If emancipation for
bosses is getting rid of housework, going freely about, and
turning us more and more into slaves in their homes, we do not
see liberation. As for the black movement, we perceive a
greater affinity of interests and worldview with the domestic
workers' movement. Although the possibility for solidarity
between the black movement and the movement of domestic
workers always existed, since most domestic workers are
black, this coalition on a national scale, which negotiated with
society and the State, only materialized in the 1980s. Decisive
to this was the black movement's vehement criticism of the
myth of racial democracy, which purported the absence of race
in Brazil (Bernardino-Costa, 2004). Consequently, the demands
of the black movement lacked resonance until the late 1980s.
From that time forth, the black movement gained a place in
the national political arena and domestic workers, and upon
joining forces with the former, strengthened their own position.
Both coalitions with the class movement and the feminist
and black movements were fundamental for the legal
equalization act, through a constitutional amendment passed
in the beginning of 2013. That act removed a paragraph in the
Brazilian Federal Constitution that restricted several social
rights to the domestic workers. Since then, Brazilian domestic
workers have had the right, under official regulation, to a
fixed workweek, overtime pay, unemployment insurance,
guarantee fund for severance pay (FGTS in Portuguese) and
night-shift rates, among others. Nonetheless, this constitutional amendment does not apply to domestic day laborers,
i.e. those working less than three days per week in the house
of a single employer. This subset comprises one quarter of the
entire domestic labor force in the country.
To summarize, what one sees in this political history of the
formation of unions by domestic workers is the emergence of a
black working class women's movement, in which we can
identify the intersectionality between class, race and gender. In
other words, the axes of power of class, race and gender,
once seen as categories of inferiorization and subordination
became and continue to be central to the political and democratic mobilization of domestic workers, thus acting as positive
vectors for the political agency of these women.
Also noteworthy in the context of the unions is the
subjective experience of the intersectionality of race, gender
and class. The unions are spaces not only of political resistance,
but also of the restructuring and resignification of lived experience. The unions act as spaces for the recognition of the
other as a complex subject with feelings and emotions. The
political education and valuation of black women are achieved
through activities that include the revisiting and reclamation of
their historic contributions to the nation and the reinforcement
of the value of black women's bodies and esthetics. In sum, a
political project emerges through the unions' activities and
actions that, by weaving together issues of race, class and
gender, seeks to overcome the dynamics of hegemonic power,

J. Bernardino-Costa / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 7280

which inferiorizes the black woman. It is in this sense that we

are able to understand interviewees' discourse of participation
and membership in union activities as rebirth: only in this
social space were they truly valued as full human beings.
Conclusion
The study of female domestic workers in Brazil shows
how the concept of intersectionality can be used in two main
ways. First as a concept that focuses on the combined effects
of disempowerment and oppression. Second as a concept
that emphasizes the possibility of political and democratic
mobilization.
We have also seen that the meaning of intersectionality
varies according to the social context under study. In the
workplace, the prevailing notion of intersectionality is one in
which the differentials of race, class and gender interact,
disempowering the social actors involved. In the spaces in
which female domestic workers become politically organized, on the other hand, these markers of social difference
work to strengthen the solidarity among themselves and
between these women and other social actors (such as
activists from the union, feminist and black movements).
Female domestic workers gained strength by breaking away
from the socialization and values imposed by their employers,
a rupture achieved in a number of ways, including: reaching
adulthood, acquiring more life experience and learning how
to deal with employers, leaving their employers' house to
live in their own homes, participating in union activities, and
so on.
Another aspect worth mentioning is how domestic
workers subjectively experience intersectionality in the two
spaces discussed above: in the workplace and the union. In
general the workplace is a space clearly characterized by
relations of power, race, class and gender, where the axes of
disempowerment, humiliation, bondage and dehumanization
are experienced, materializing in the simplest of day-to-day
attitudes of the employers, such as not saying good morning to
the domestic worker, not talking to her, and talking about her
as if she were not present. The contradiction within the social
relations taking place inside the home is that while the worker
takes care of the family and creates comfort, well-being, and
cleanliness, she is treated as a piece of equipment or a slave,
disregarded as a human person. Within the framework of trade
unions, the crossing of the axes of power of race, class and
gender are subjectively experienced as factors of empowerment and the achievement of autonomy. In their activism, as
well as in the daily activities of the unions, race, class and
gender are important dimensions in the workers' lives for
the achievement of value as full human beings. Thus, the
raising of the self-esteem of these women, black and
belonging to the poor working class, becomes joy, happiness
and rebirth.
We saw their criticism of political action based only on
social class, as if the working class were homogeneous, without
internal distinctions, and of the hegemonic feminist movement
when the latter fails to see the women's movement acknowledging differences among women, especially of class and race.
Finally, although we observe a greater proximity between the
black movement's agenda and the demands and elaborations
of the domestic workers' movement, the former also becomes a

79

target of criticism when it becomes a black man's academic

movement. Echoing Sueli Carneiro (2003a, 2003b), we
can say that by combining class, race and gender perspectives, the black feminism of the domestic workers' movement blackens and feminizes the demands of the union
movement.
Acknowledgments
I thank Encarnacin Gutirrez-Rodrguez, Jurema Brites
and the two anonymous reviewers for their contributions to
this article, and I take full responsibility for the analysis
developed here.
Endnote
1
Female domestic workers have organized the following ten national
congresses: First National Congress in So Paulo City, 1968; Second National
Congress in Rio de Janeiro, 1974; Third National Congress in Belo Horizonte,
1978; Fourth National Congress in Porto Alegre, 1981; Fifth National
Congress in Recife, 1985; Sixth National Congress in Campinas, 1989;
Seventh National Congress in Rio de Janeiro, 1993; Eighth National Congress
in Belo Horizonte, 2001; Ninth National Congress in Salvador, 2006 and
Tenth National Congress in Recife, 2011.

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