The second section of my book, Global Women, first focuses on conflict; conflict between nannies and their employers. The relationship between the two women of the household, nannies and the lady of the house, is often one that is very strained. The author describes the tension that builds between the two parties until eventually a conflict arises. When this conflict does arise the tension that has brewed under the surface often amounts to feuds that end a relationship, end an employment, and hurt feelings. Things are often said in these instances that would otherwise not have been spoken, but both parties feel threatened by the others resistance to change. In one instance the author retells, the nanny had been employed by the same family for eleven years, and had raised the family’s children from birth. After a major blow-up and hurtful words from the lady of the house telling her that she should “remember, you’re just a maid”, this said nanny decided to quit. After the incident, she took a job with a nightly hospital cleaning crew, making almost 50% less than what she had been receiving at her house job. However she can be quoted as saying “What matters most to me is feeling good, seeing that they like my work…money is important for material things. I know that without money you’ve got nothing, but I can’t expect to earn the same as I was before.”
These blow ups make people say and do things that are both out of character and also blown out of proportion. But there can be a solution. When the two parties can address their interests, or in these instances what is in fact bothering them, they can come to an understanding and find a solution that will benefit everyone, rather than the latter which leaves one out of a job, and one out of help, important to their everyday life. This idea of finding common interests is something that we have been speaking about in class. Interests were proven to be the most effective way to resolve conflict because it maximizes utility for both parties. In one example in my book, the woman of the house quit her job in order to spend more time with her family, but kept the nanny in order to maintain her house and children. The nanny felt as though her job was being infringed upon, while the woman of the house thought she was making the nannies life easier by helping out. The nanny decided at this time to ask the respective family for a raise. The family consented to the raise on the condition that the nanny expanded her duties to regular babysitting hours on Friday and Saturday nights. This caused a blow-up between the two women, and things were said by both parties they willingly admitted after the fact that they didn’t mean. Later however the two parties reconciled and laid their interests out for the other to see; the nanny wanted her job to be respected and not infringed upon, and the woman wanted her household to continue to run efficiently. The two decided that the nanny would work three days a week for the family, and two days elsewhere, but remained living with them in order to save money on rent and bills.
Another alternative that nannies have to quitting is quitting through an alibi. These nannies tell their families that they must return to their own families in their respective countries. This is their way of avoiding conflict. These women seek to leave on a peaceful note and avoid the blow ups they have seen countless friends encounter. Normally the women have just found a new job, or are simply fed up with that family.
The other part of my book for this segment discussed the idea of housework from an individual employee’s perspective or a company’s perspective. It points out that 40 percent of our countries wealth is owned by 1 percent of the population. The bottom 20 percent are living with negative assets, which means “the degradation of others is readily purchased”. It also says that more than 80 percent of Americans still clean their own homes, but the minority who do not are the nation’s “media decision”; they are the makers, political figures, talking heads and all kinds of celebrities. Housework is becoming politics to these people, framing house-workers as women of certain race or class. One thing that made me extremely concerned was that Zoe Baird, a lawyer, who boasted earnings of $507,000 yearly, and was a media spokesperson for promoting the rights of nannies, was paying her own household workers only $5 an hour.
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