Jolene Tan
The F-word Blog
In my gleamingly modern home town of Singapore, trading in women has been refined to a stomach-churningly efficient art. The women in question are foreign domestic workers (FDWs), locally known as “maids”, who travel from poorer countries – principally but not only the Philippines and Indonesia – to live in private households and provide cleaning, cooking and care services. So ubiquitous is their hire – in the hundreds of thousands, in a country of 5 million – that online portal bestmaid.com.sg confidently declares, “In Singapore, maid is not a luxury, but a necessity.”
Fortunately, “maid agencies” are to hand to assist with procuring these necessities. Visit one of the offices that dot the island and you can see FDWs displayed like so many wares, often in uniform haircuts and agency-branded T-shirts. To determine if you’re getting value for money, you can’t engage with the woman in front of you – you have to fill in a form with your preferences so that the agency can consult their comprehensive catalogue, neatly enabling you to locate a maid with the desired height, build, nationality, age, skin colour, religion, marital status, number of children and other vital qualifications for the job.
But I’m behind the times – rather than making this trip you could also consult maidlibrary.com, the “maid search” function of which helpfully divides into “married” and “not married” columns by default.
Read the rest here.
HELP keep the voice of TOC alive!
If you like this article, please consider a small donation to help theonlinecitizen.com stay alive. Please note that we can only accept donations from Singaporeans. Thank you for your assistance.Do you have a flair for writing? Volunteer with us. Email us your full name and contact details to theonlinecitizen@gmail.com
Some good observations initially – but as to be expected with this kind of writing, it always boils down to ‘issues of patriarchy’ – ie, it’s always the fault of *evil* men.
Female employers just can’t help beating their maids, can they? It’s always someone else’s fault.
I would have posted this on the ‘F-word’ site, but I guess it would be rejected for being anti-feminist.
*sighs*
@yikes
it’s really not surprising given who the writer of the article is…!
In my view, singapore’s maids are one of the cheapest in the whole world. But the total cost involved can be higher than this due to the Tarriffs which goes to ….? So, their salary is dirt cheap. A few hundred a month. Even 3 room households can afford them. There are many abuse cases. Simply value for money. Even wash car every day for you. outside, 1 car wash is $10 at least. If they clean everyday, you actuall earned money from them.
@Yikes
I do not excuse abusive female employers at all. Patriarchy is not code for “evil men” – if that were the case, there would be no point in critiquing it.
Patriarchy is a system of social hierarchies which privilege some people and disadvantage others along gendered (and other) lines. Both women and men can act to promote patriarchy.
If anyone would like to have conversation with this about me please comment at the original post as I might not be looking at this page as regularly!
I meant “conversation with me about this”. Typing fail!
The maid trade = modern slavery
How many who have domestic helpers are actually civil enough, generous enough, educated enough, kind enough, mature enough, socially aware enough, self aware/reflective enough?
When one has the mentality that he/she has the right to own another person/persons, it is the most terrible thing. And yet, that is very much ‘encouraged’ and seen commonly here. Even most good people faces severe challenges within if given ‘absolute’ power over others, especially if these ‘others’ speak a different language and come from different cultures and backgrounds.
Did these ‘others’ come into our shores to destroy our economy, did they come here to enjoy being exploited and ‘owned’, did they come here to be insulted?
But how many, if one considers starting a family, can have one partner not working? How many of us are close to our families? How many of us have incredible relationships with our neighbours? How many of us have been absolutely convinced that our time is indeed equal to money? How many of us have been sold to the idea that our identity and self worth is peg to our ability to find cash and our obsessions with the material world and our positions in society?
Who sold this to us? Could we have known better?
what maid trades? the foreign maids are bein used as pawns and slaves…
nothin is FREE..even the passage to singapoor is bein bear by the maids families in their provinces
to beome a maid in singapore..you have to gurantee 1 year of you(maid) salaries as form of services for trainnin/gloomin/food and that stupid agent uniform)
i know what i am talkin about..i processed their paperworks when i used to ^work^…..
Funny how Singaporeans do not complain about these foreign workers on low wages….
Why on earth does anyone even need a live-in maid? How lazy can you be?!