Embodied Inequality

Abstract

This chapter examines the role of bodies and embodiment in domestic work. It argues that bodies matter for how domestic employees experience their work. Indeed, domestic workers' accounts emphasized physical labor and the embodied inequality between employer and employee. They described their work as exhausting, accelerating the deterioration of their bodies, and potentially dangerous. These accounts conceive of the body as a limited resource that women draw on to do their work, a resource that can be used up or damaged in the process. Bodies also matter because of the symbolic distinctions drawn between “good,” middle-class/elite bodies and “bad,” lower-class/deviant bodies—between employers' and workers' bodies. Workers face clear boundaries between themselves and employers in relation to health, food consumption, and appearance. Even employers who buck tradition by pursuing more egalitarian relations are aware of the differential values typically placed on differently classed bodies in Ecuador.