Navigating Family–Work Relationships during Covid-19 Pandemic: Family Domestic Workers in Rural Limpopo, South Africa
Bayane, Percyval
Domestic work — one of the largest sources of employment
in South Africa — is rooted in the colonial and apartheid era,
during which black women worked as domestic servants for white
families. In contemporary South Africa, however, domestic work is
prevalent in black families, and there is a growing trend towards
family domestic work: family members or close friends working as
domestic workers for kin. Typical challenges in the domestic work
sector include the navigation of employer–employee relationships,
which shape the negotiation of other working conditions. In family
domestic work, the setting is worsened by the Covid-19 pandemic
and implementation of working from home. This paper draws
from 15 semi-structured interviews conducted with black women
working as family domestic workers. The findings suggest that
family domestic work is centred in reciprocal caring — sister-maids
are financially enabled to support families and sister-madams are
assisted with domestic duties. Covid-19 has had an impact on family
domestic work and family–work relationships, whereby sister-maids
had difficulties working in the presence of sister-madams and their
children. Hence, silence is adopted by sister-maids challenged by
working during Covid-19. However, the pandemic also enabled
some sister-maids and sister-madams to grow closer to each other,
which strengthened family–work relationships.
↧