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Half-million girls work as
domestic ‘slaves’ in Brazil

By Mario Osava

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, May 7 (IPS)— A campaign is underway in Brazil to quash the notion that hiring a girl to work in one’s home is “normal.” The estimated half-million female minors working as maids — often without pay — are the focus of a new effort by national and international institutions to stop child labor.

This “tradition,” a throwback to the slave era, persists due to widespread poverty and to the fact that “society considers it natural” that black girls should perform domestic chores, Creuza Maria Oliveira, president of the National Federation of Domestic Workers, told IPS.

Oliveira herself endured this form of exploitation. “I began working at age nine,” taken from the countryside of the northeast state of Bahía to its capital, Salvador, by a family that promised to enroll her in school in exchange for keeping the young son company, she recounts.

“I was a child taking care of another child.” There was no school and her duties extended to include cooking and housework. “I didn’t go to school until I was 16,” and that was through a government literacy program, she said.

The practice of looking for poor girls in the countryside to take them to the city to work in family homes continues to this day. And many of the “employers” see themselves as something like foster parents, or benefactors, for providing the girls with a home, food and protection.

But in many respects “it is a form of violence worse than slavery, though much more subtle,” commented Oliveira, noting that in the “senzala,” the slave quarters on plantations, the girls could at least stay with their families.

Today’s “domestics” usually sleep alone in tiny bedrooms, which are even smaller in the newer apartment buildings in Brazilian cities. And in many cases the girls are victims of harassment and sexual violence at the hands of the young “patron” (male head of household), said the union leader.

At 45, Oliveira heads the federation of unions that represent some five million domestic workers in Brazil, nearly all women.

But there is scant union support in this sector of the labor market, largely because the workers live in relative isolation and most are unaware of their labor rights.

The campaign against child domestic labor is promoted by the International Labor Organization (ILO), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the Brazilian organizations Abrinq Foundation and ANDI (News Agency of Children’s Rights) and the Britain-based Save the Children.

Television, radio and print ads, with the slogan “Don’t take this idea home,” underscore that child labor violates the Brazilian constitution and the Statute on Children and Adolescents, a 1990 law that guarantees the rights of minors. Slavery was abolished in Brazil in 1888.

In 2002 there were more than 492,000 domestic workers between the ages of five and 17, according to the governmental Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). But unionists believe the true total is much higher than that because it is an “invisible” problem, one that few in Brazilian society are willing to acknowledge.

Ninety-six percent of these underage domestic workers are female, and a third began working between the ages of five and 11. Laws prohibit employing anyone under 16, though “apprenticeships” are tolerated for youths who are at least 14.

Illiteracy among these young female workers has been dramatically reduced, and now stands at four percent. But a quarter do not go to school, and the portion rises as work-hours increase. By age 15, most girls are working more than 40 hours a week.

Work-related accidents are common, and can be attributed to the young age of the employees. Specialized studies show that 36 percent of girls working as domestics suffer burns, cuts, or mishaps involving chemical products.

The public campaign against child domestic labor is “a historic step” because, for the first time, this “socially accepted” phenomenon is coming under attack, in an effort to “change the mentality” of the population, “whether the families of these girls or those who employ them,” said Oliveira.

But the authorities must monitor and punish this exploitation of poor children, she added.

According to IBGE figures, there were 5.4 million children between the ages of five and 17 working in Brazil in 2001, of which a million were not attending school and 296,000 were under 11.

The Program to Eradicate Child Labor has pulled nearly three million minors out of this situation in the past few years, by granting “scholarships” — subsidies so that they will attend school instead of going to work — and conducting inspections in the agricultural sector and the coal and shoe industries, industries in which children are often employed.

But domestic work, being less visible and more difficult to identify because it requires gaining access to households, was not covered by the Program, say campaign organizers. Precisely because of its characteristics, they say, it is essential to fight child domestic labor using the mass media.

The problem has historic roots in Brazil. Female slaves were used by their owners as “milk nurses” to feed and care for their children, says sociologist Irene Rizzini, of the Rio-based Centre for Child and Youth Research, told IPS.

Poverty and other social inequalities perpetuate this relationship today, although in different forms.

It is also a question of gender, because women’s work is undervalued and girls are often relegated to “the household sphere,” Rizzini said.

And it is an issue of race discrimination, as most domestic employees are black or indigenous, points out union leader Oliveira.

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