INEQUALITIES, ASYMMETRIES AND EXPLOITATION IN DOMESTIC WORK

an attack on human freedom and dignity in Latin America

Abstract

From an expanded perspective of human rights, the article delves into the analysis of domestic work as an expression of a naturalization of relations of domination that affects in a more general way the world of work and in the context of capitalism. It shows how many domestic jobs, due to their precarious and unequal conditions, are in turn the prelude of vexatious labor expressions and come to generate conditions of forced labor and conditions analogous to slavery. Thus, having as a background Latin American societies, we study how social relations between employees and employers contain underlying elements of a patriarchal, ethnic and coloniality type that normalize and reinforce the exploitation, generating situations that can lead to forced labor and/or in conditions analogous to slavery, because the economic needs of domestic workers ”“ among other aspects ”“ do not question and tolerate such exploitative situations, which are already conditioned by a culture that understands this type of work as normally precarious, despite the fact that some rights can be recognized.