Maid in Manila

Maid in Manila

Imagine having to leave your family, travel to a faraway city by boat, live with a family whom you have never met, heed to their every beck and call 24 hours a day and for all of your troubles and earn a mere 10,000 pesos (200 dollars) a month.

That is the life of a typical household helper, referred to hereon as a maid, in Manila. It is a life of detachment from one’s family, strenuous labor and submission to the order of a family one has never met, all for the continuous strife for the almighty peso.

Working as a maid is common in Manila. Maids usually hail from the provinces and more often than not, live within the borders of poverty. They are usually women, single mothers with about 4 to 5 children. Their highest educational achievement is a high school diploma and even with that, they have not obtained any clerical skills or experience that could earn them a job in the industrial workforce.

Seeking greener pastures, these women eventually turn to “recruiters”. These recruiters go to the provinces, enlist women in their maid hiring service, and after a few days, designate a maid to a certain family in the city. Demand for maids never run out. As long as people need help, and as long as marginalized women need jobs, there will always be a ready supply of maids. What these women must do then is to immediately pack up their belongings, take the first boat to Manila and as soon as they get there, start working as a maid for a family.

Maids are jack-of-all-trades and if they aren’t, they must learn to be. They must clean the house, wash the dishes, do laundry, clean the cars, cook the food and babysit among others. They live in a shoddy room, usually referred to as the “maid’s quarters”, in the house and must be ready and willing to comply to their employer’s every demand. To add to the physical intensity of their jobs, maids also have to put up with the attitudes of their employer and their employer’s families. Often would a maid be disrespected and be seen only as a servant, rather than a human being. Spoiled children would ask their maid to do the most menial of tasks and if the maid does not do her job well in the standards of her employer, it is reflected in the cut of her paycheck.

A lowly reputation is given to maids. This societal taint on their occupation, however, is something I passionately disagree with. My family and I have a maid back in my home in Manila and I have seen with my own eyes how hard she has to work and how much she had to sacrifice for the sake of earning money for her children. We treat her as part of the family and we treat her with the high respect that maids should always have.

A website about maids would make a great topic for my last hypertext. It is time for the maids’ story to be told. It is time for their dignity to be upheld. It is time for the great middle to upper class citizens to give them the high regard and respect that they deserve.