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Peru Domestic Servants
The urban middle-class family without servants is
incomplete.
Although household servants constitute a major element in
the
urban informal economic sector, they are rarely analyzed
as part
of it. The retaining, training, disciplining, or
recruiting of
domestic help is constantly in progress under the
supervision of
the wife of the household head. One of the most common
sights in
Lima is therefore the small printed sign in front of
houses
reading "Se necesita muchacha" ("girl needed").
There is a constant flow of young highland migrant
women to
urban areas, and a very large portion of them seek
domestic
positions on first arriving in Lima. Although census
figures were
dated, it appeared that about 18 percent of all women
employed in
metropolitan Lima in 1990 were domestic servants. Domestic
service work of course pays poorly, and social and sexual
abuse
appear often to accompany such employment. Nevertheless,
in the
absence of other alternatives, migrant women find these
jobs
temporarily useful in providing "free" housing and a
context for
learning city life, while also having some opportunity to
attend
night school to learn a profession, such as tailoring or
cosmetology, two of the more popular fields. As domestic
work has
been increasingly regulated, the term empleada
(employee)
has begun to replace the use of muchacha as the
term of
reference. Over the 1960-91 period, households have been
obliged
to permit servants to attend school and to cover other
costs,
such as social security.
Data as of September 1992
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