Some Women's Work: Domestic Work, Class, Race, Heteropatriarchy, and the Limits of Legal Reform

Authors

Terri Nilliasca, City University of New York School of Law

Abstract

This Note employs Critical Race, feminist, Marxist, and queer theory to analyze the underlying reasons for the exclusion of domestic workers from legal and regulatory systems. The Note begins with a discussion of the role of legal and regulatory systems in upholding and replicating White supremacy within the employer and domestic worker relationship. The Note then goes on to argue that the White, feminist movement's emphasis on access to wage labor further subjugated Black and immigrant domestic workers. Finally, I end with an in-depth legal analysis of New York's Domestic Worker Bill of Rights, the nation's first state law to specifically extend legal protections to domestic workers. The Note discusses many provisions of the bill and draws on the experiences of organizers involved in the passage of the bill to provide critical analysis of the limitations of legal reform. With this Note, I hope to provide organizers, activists, and legal practitioners with additional critical tools crafting solutions, legal reforms, and narratives in the struggle to end the oppression of domestic workers.

Recommended Citation

Terri Nilliasca, Some Women's Work: Domestic Work, Class, Race, Heteropatriarchy, and the Limits of Legal Reform, 16 Mich. J. Race & L. 377 (2011).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjrl/vol16/iss2/1