Concepcion Alejo is used to being invisible.
On Tuesday morning, Alejo, 43, put on makeup and stepped out of her small apartment on the edge of Mexico City. She walked until the gravel outside her home turned to cobblestones and the campaign posters on the small concrete buildings gave way to the spotless walls of the gated neighborhoods of the city’s upper classes.
For 26 years, Alejo has quietly cleaned houses and raised children for wealthy Mexicans here.
Alejo is one of about 2.5 million Mexicans, mostly women, who work as domestic workers in the Latin American country, an occupation that has exemplified the gender and class divides that have long permeated Mexico. .
Women like her play an important role in Mexican society, shouldering the burden of household chores as more female professionals enter the workforce. Despite reforms by the current government, many domestic workers still face low wages, employer abuse and long working hours. It’s an institution that dates back to colonial times, and some researchers equate precarious working conditions to “modern-day slavery.”
Now, with Mexico likely to elect its first female president on June 2, domestic workers are hoping former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Scheinbaum or former Sen. Xochitl Galvez can turn the tide. Good for them.
“I’ve never voted in all these years because no matter who wins, it’s the same to us. … When did they listen to us and why should I vote for them?” Alejo said. “At least there is With a woman, maybe things would be different. “
Born into a poor family in the central Mexican state of Puebla, Alejo dropped out of school at 14 and moved to Mexico City with his two sisters to work as a live-in nanny.
“It’s like you’re a mother. The kids call me ‘Mom,'” she said. “I give them baths, I take care of them, I do everything from the moment I wake up to the moment they go to sleep.”
While some domestic workers live apart from their families, many more live with their families, working for weeks or even months with no breaks and isolated from family and friends.
Alejo said the demands of domestic work and low pay prevented her from having children herself. Others told The Associated Press they were fired after falling ill and asked their employers for help.
“When you work in someone else’s home, your life is no longer your own,” said Carolina Solana de Dios, 47, a live-in nanny.
Their help is crucial for working women like Claudia Rodríguez, a 49-year-old single mother, who is still trying to break into career fields that have historically been dominated by men. In Mexico and much of Latin America, there has long been a gap between men and women in the workplace. Mexican government data show that in 2005, 80% of men were employed or looking for work, compared with 40% of women.
Over time, this gap has narrowed, although large differences in salaries and leadership roles remain.
Born in a small town two hours’ drive from Mexico City, Rodriguez fled her abusive father and took refuge in the capital with her mother and siblings. Instead of pursuing her dream of dancing professionally, she started working and studying so as not to “make the same sacrifices” as her mother who toiled in different informal jobs.
She spent several years working in the IT industry, but when she and her husband had children, she took over all the household chores. When her husband left her for another woman six years ago, hiring a live-in domestic help was her only way to make ends meet.
Today, she and her nanny Irma both get up at 5am, one makes lunch for her two daughters and the other takes them to school.
“For women in business, we can’t do this alone because society expects so much of you,” she said.
Yet historically a surprising number of Mexican women are taking on leadership positions, in part due to gender quota laws imposed by political parties. Since 2018, the gender ratio in Mexico’s Congress has been 50:50, and the number of female governors has surged.
While neither presidential candidate explicitly talks about domestic workers, both Scheinbaum and Galvez have proposed addressing violence against women and closing the country’s gender pay gap.
In 2019, the government of President Andres Manuel López Obrador passed landmark legislation giving domestic workers basic rights such as paid leave, limits on working hours and access to employer pay health insurance.
But Norma Palacios, president of the country’s domestic workers union SINACTRAHO, said the government’s failure to enforce the rules had left domestic workers without protection and trapped in “a dynamic of unequal power.”
“Nothing has changed… even on paper we should have more labor rights,” Palacios said.
Both Alejo, a migrant domestic worker, and Rodriguez, a single mother, said they particularly identified with any candidate on the ballot. Both plan to vote. Even if they think leaders are more of the same, they agree with Palacios and say female leaders would be an important step.
“The leader of this country is still a woman – a country of sexism, a country of inequality, a country of violence against women, a country of femicide,” Palacios said.
Meanwhile, workers like Alejo continue on a precarious path.
SINACTRAHO data shows that 98% of domestic workers are not yet covered by health insurance, and Alejo is one of them.
She finally worked with a kind family that paid her a fair wage, but she found the courage to ask them to pay for her health insurance, fearing that she would be replaced if she asked for her rights to be respected.
“They don’t like it when you make demands,” she said. “It’s not easy to find a job, and if you need a job, you end up taking whatever they give you.”
