IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/pal/palchp/978-0-230-35463-0_13.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

The Maids Who did Not Want to Be Maids

In: Organizational Misbehaviour in the Workplace

Author

Listed:
  • Jan Ch. Karlsson

Abstract

Almost everywhere, maids, domestics and other occupational groups working in private homes come from low positions in class and ethnic hierarchies. This story is about Afro-American women working in the homes of white people in Kentucky. These women are very experienced at their jobs, as they have worked this way for many years. That is also one reason why they have been able to develop strategies to establish a certain autonomy and dignity at work in spite of their socially subordinate positions. Something that has contributed towards making it easier for them is the fact that they have benefited from a rather good labour market while there have also been other jobs available to them as black working-class women. Furthermore, they have often had to do two or three jobs at the same time. Thus, if they were to quit one of these in protest, it would not mean economic disaster.

Suggested Citation

  • Jan Ch. Karlsson, 2012. "The Maids Who did Not Want to Be Maids," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Organizational Misbehaviour in the Workplace, chapter 13, pages 48-49, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-35463-0_13
    DOI: 10.1057/9780230354630_13
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-35463-0_13. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.