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A Twitter feed is exposing how millions of Brazilian domestic workers
are treated as an underclass. Claire Rigby reports from So Paulo
43(3): 83/86 | DOI: 10.1177/0306422014548626
Maid equal in Brazil
M
Y IDIOT MAID waits till I have dirt-
ied fve blouses, then washes them
all at once. Shes an imbecile. I asked the
maid where my tablet was and she pointed
to the Kindle, the ignorant creature. I hate
it when my maid cleans the living room. She
always unplugs the wi-f, the whore.
Delving into the timeline of Brazilian
Twitter account @aminhaempregada is a
sobering experience, like eavesdropping on
hundreds of conversations taking place in
every far-fung corner of the country. The
account was created in May to aggregate
and retweet posts using the term a minha
empregada (my maid) or the word empre-
gada (maid).
That idiot, that slut, the lazy whore
are some of the choice phrases that show
up alongside the words minha empregada.
Another favourite is flha da puta (daughter
of a whore) or because on Twitter, every
character counts more often just fdp.
I think the most offensive tweets are the
racist ones, says the accounts creator and
curator, a young marketing professional
who prefers to remain anonymous. I
remember one that said something like, My
maid was supposed to wash my trainers and
she hasnt done it, the dirty macaca [mon-
key, a racist insult]. Some people feel at
extraordinary liberty to speak freely on the
internet.
On Twitter, with its relatively elite group
of users, theres no a minha patroa (my
boss) equivalent so the other side of the
story can be heard, and very few posts by
domestic workers themselves in response to
@aminhaempregada. Some children of maids
reply. My mother is a maid, but they treat
her so well I never imagined there were peo-
ple who disrespected maids like this, wrote
one of @aminhaempregadas thousands of
followers. A male domestic worker wrote:
Im north-eastern, black, a domestic worker
and poor. No one knows how we suffer. His
voice is the exception.
Type empregada domstica into a search
engine and the results are mainly agencies or
information on employers responsibilities.
That lack of a public voice mirrors maids
social isolation in the workplace, especially
for live-in employees. There are thought to
be some nine million domestic employees
working in the country currently, and the
man behind @aminhaempregada, like mil-
lions Brazilians of even slightly affluent
means, was raised by a succession of maids
himself. I loved our maids, he tells Index.
I still have the vinyl record one of them
gave me for my birthday when I was a
I N FOCUS

He explains how in Brazil even

the terms my maid is loaded
and that gave him the idea of
searching Twitter for it
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child. Its one of my treasured posses-
sions. Still shocked daily by the tweets that
show up in his search feeds, he explains how
in Brazil even the term my maid is loaded
and that was what gave him the idea of
searching Twitter for it.
The term is not technically wrong of
course people say my doctor, my dentist,
but the phrase my maid had always made
me feel uncomfortable when I hear it.
The term has a proprietorial ring to it:
domestic service is a sensitive subject in
Brazil, where the scars of slavery still run
deep. According to the Trans-Atlantic Slave
Trade Database, 4.86 million African slaves
were shipped to Brazil from the mid-1500s
until the late 1800s, compared to 388,000
shipped directly to North America.
A constitutional amendment was passed
in March 2013 to establish a range of rights
for domestic employees, including the right
to an eight-hour day, extra pay for over-
time and nights, and basic health and safety
guarantees. The amendment, presented by
Benedita da Silva, a member of Congress
and a former domestic servant herself, is
expected to be consolidated this year with a
second raft of legislation dealing with some
of the thornier nitty-gritty needed to bring
the rights of domestic employees into line
with those of the rest of Brazilian workers.
There is currently a debate in Congress over
whether the employers of domestic work-
ers will have to shoulder the same fnancial
responsibilities, when fring their employees,
as companies.
Carlos Alberto Pinto de Carvalho is an
employment lawyer and a partner in the
start-up Webhome, a website providing legal
advice for domestic employers. He supports
the legislation and its effect of formalising the
relationship between maids and their employ-
ers. It mainly serves to guarantee payment
for overtime and nights, he says. But it also
sends a message to employers that they run
the risk of being fned and empowers employ-
ees to speak up for themselves.
A lack of reliable information, however,
means that the ability to speak up is com-
plicated for domestic employees, many of
whom have limited education and lack the
resources to fnd out about new rights and
legislation.
A friend of mine told me about the new
law for domestic workers, says Valdenes
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Domestic service is a sensitive
subject in Brazil, where the
scars of slavery still run deep
ABOVE: Maids take a break on Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

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Lopes de Oliveira, 43, who has worked as a
maid since she was 17. She saw something
about it on the daytime news.
Does she think the government has a
duty to fnd ways to divulge the information
about domestic employees new rights?
I think the press does, she says. I am
only able to watch the news in the evening,
and Ive never seen it reported there at all.
They should report it more, so everyone can
see it.
As a result of her friends information,
Lopes informed her employer that she was
now legally entitled to a lunch break.
She said I could have 15 minutes for a
sandwich, but I told her I need at least 30
minutes. I need a proper meal at lunchtime,
says Lopes. A cooked lunch underpinned
by rice and beans is a non-negotiable part
of the day for most Brazilian workers. I
dont know how long were allowed by law,
Lopes continues. Could you fnd out and let
me know?
The law, says Pinto de Carvalho, allows
for an hours break for lunch in an eight-
hour working day. My sister says, Why
dont you train to be a hairdresser? says
Lopes. But I like the job I like the peo-
ple I work for. For a younger generation
of women who might previously have gone
into the profession, rising affuence and ini-
tiatives like the governments Bolsa Familia
programme, which distributes cash benefts
to millions of families on low incomes, has
created new opportunities.
Nobody wants to be a maid anymore,
says Lopes. One friend of hers has left the
profession to study to become a teacher,
and many of the other younger women she
knows are busy pursuing careers and studies
in areas like IT, hairdressing and nursing.
Meanwhile, for thousands of families
accustomed to having their every need met
by a servant, the prospect of having to do
their own housework looms. A headline in a
recent feature in Bonde, a Brazilian news and
entertainment website, is a harbinger of the
changes afoot: No maid? Read on to fnd
out how to keep your home clean and tidy
yourself. x
Claire Rigby
www.indexoncensorship.org
Claire Rigby is a freelance journalist based
in Brazil. She is a co-founder of Fluxo, an
experimental journalism studio in down-
town So Paulo
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