In a rare case, an Ethiopian domestic worker in Lebanon is taking her former employer and the agency that hired her to court over accusations of slavery and slave trading. The woman, identified as M.H., alleges that she was underpaid, locked up and assaulted over several years. Activists are hoping it will help change the worker sponsorship program in Lebanon.
As the developing world becomes more affluent, many of the newly rich are wanting to have butlers and other personal servants. The gold standard for those personal servants is butlers trained in the United Kingdom, which has created a demand that far outstrips supply.
Many domestic workers get stuck in jobs that pay them low wages, subject them to long hours and sometimes even expose them to physical abuse. And because many are undocumented, they don’t, or can’t, speak up. But some states are trying to change that.
The film adaptation of “The Help” has been out since last week, and reviews are mixed. Some say the film depicts the lives of African-American domestic workers with too much levity. Discussions abound about the movie’s treatment of the sensitive relationship between white women and black domestic servants – many of them negative. We’ll discuss the […]