Podcast Summary: New Books Network

Episode: Katherine Eva Maich, "Bringing Law Home: Gender, Race, and Household Labor Rights" (Stanford UP, 2025)

Host: Dr. Miranda Melcher

Guest: Dr. Katherine Eva Maich

Date: September 15, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode features Dr. Katherine Eva Maich discussing her new book, "Bringing Law Home: Gender, Race, and Household Labor Rights." The book offers a comparative analysis of domestic workers’ rights and experiences in New York City and Lima, Peru, exploring the intersections of gender, race, law, and urban politics. Dr. Maich explains how legislative protections function—or fail to function—in these cities and reflects on the lived realities and struggles of domestic workers both historically and in the present.

Guest Introduction and Research Motivation

[02:41] Dr. Katherine Eva Maich:

• Assistant professor of sociology at Texas A&M University; faculty affiliate in Women's and Gender Studies.
• Background in empirical legal studies and comparative/global research on gender, labor, and social policy.
• Initial interest emerged while interviewing unionized housekeepers in Massachusetts, noting differences in demographics ("largely white older women") compared to service work globally.
• Inspired by global perspectives from UC Berkeley, she designed a comparative study between Lima and New York, the latter being the first US site with historic domestic worker protections.

Quote:
"I decided to construct this comparative study between one Latin American country, which is, of course, is Lima, Peru...as well as New York City, which is the first site of any kind of historic domestic worker protections, legally created domestic worker protections in the United States." — Katherine Maich [05:35]

Comparative Context: Why Lima and New York City?

[06:00] Lima:

• Centralized site for domestic work, reflecting deep wealth disparity, colonial legacy, and migration from countryside to city.
• Domestic work is normalized and generational, commonly involving live-in workers (not only the very wealthy).
• Stable employer-worker relationships compared to New York; often decades-long associations across generations.
• Population mainly mestiza/indigenous women, often internal migrants; contrast with New York’s highly diverse immigrant background.

[New York City]:

• Heterogeneous workforce, significant internal and international migration, high worker and employer mobility.
• Domestic worker movement is vibrant but work is short-term due to shifting family needs and urban migration patterns.

Quote:
"It's much more normalized [in Lima]...even being, you know, middle class. Right. This isn't a practice that's reserved for...the elite." — Katherine Maich [08:41]

Notable Contrast:

• New York workers often lose positions as families' needs change (“maybe the family left Manhattan for Brooklyn...needed a domestic worker who could drive”), resulting in job insecurity.
• In Lima, long-standing, often live-in relationships foster more stability for workers.

Legal Frameworks and Their Social Impacts

What Are the Laws Trying to Solve?

[14:15] New York:

• Domestic Worker Bill of Rights (2010): Seminal but less robust than advocates hoped.
• Key features: Minimum wage coverage, overtime pay (depending on live-in/out status), days of rest (three paid after a year), anti-discrimination and harassment protections.
• Largely omits stronger protections once proposed, including detailed contract requirements and severance pay.

Quote:
"The New York...Domestic Worker Bill of Rights came about in 2010. It is not as strong as many of the domestic workers who I spoke with...had hoped." — Maich [14:17]

[16:00] Lima:

• 2003 Peruvian Household Workers Law offers more specific guidelines, addressing rights and obligations for both employers and workers.
• Article 4: Emphasizes worker discretion regarding household matters; law requires them to keep affairs confidential unless legally obligated to speak.
• Notably, the law neglects to address sexual violence/assault, despite the prevalence of such incidents (e.g., case of a worker jumping from a third story to escape assault [17:50]).

Quote:
"The law...says workers are obligated to be diligent and private about what goes on in the employer's home...the law is interested in protecting the employers in this sense." — Maich [15:24]

Historical and Social Context

[21:11] Historical Development (Peru):

• Long history of minimal legal protections. Earliest in 1957, expanded in 1970 to offer overtime, rest days, and vacation.
• 2003 Law followed a long organizing period, passed under President Alejandro Toledo, the first indigenous president, marking a turning point.
• Law lacked mandatory written contracts (addressed by later 2020 reform), but included unique provisions like biannual bonus pay ("gratificaciones").

Quote:
"The law was the product of decades of organizing...passed by the first indigenous democratically elected president, Alejandro Toledo." — Maich [21:51]

[26:10] Racialization and Class:

• Lima’s domestic workers often seen as second-class due to indigenous/migrant status, language (Spanish as second language), and regional origins.
• The law’s provisions (like employer-funded education) echo colonial legacies of paternalism.

Quote:
"They're recognized as less than, not only because of their race and ethnicity...but also because of kind of where they've come from." — Maich [26:48]

Immigration, Rights, and Legal Voids (New York Focus)

[29:31]

• 80% of NYC domestic workers are foreign-born; immigration status not addressed in the 2010 law.
• Vulnerability persists due to "immigrant domesticity”—legal protections ignore intersecting vulnerabilities, especially around immigration status.
• Yet, workers actively use the law to negotiate individually for better conditions, using it as a "floor" for bargaining.

Quote:
"It really establishes this labor regime of vulnerability because it's unwilling to deal with the intersectional qualities here of immigration law intersecting with labor law." — Maich [30:16]

Collective Action and Worker Organizing

[34:23] Worker Empowerment Initiatives (NYC):

• Ongoing labor organizing and professionalization of domestic work.
• Cornell University's Worker Institute's “We Rise Nanny” training: Peer training, leader development, and workers’ rights education.
  • Certification used as leverage in employment negotiations.
• Emphasis on raising awareness among workers about legal rights (also noted as an issue in Peru post-2020 reform).

Quote:
"Domestic work is the work that makes all other work possible...work that just doesn't stop." — Maich [34:26]

Key Cross-City Differences and Lessons

[37:26] Comparative Insights:

• NY law influenced by global domestic worker movements (contracts modeled after Hong Kong, though not adopted).
• Severance pay: Built into Peruvian law since 2003, absent (but discussed) in NY. In NY, loss of a job often comes with “a designer bag” instead of pay; in Lima, severance aids transition.

Quote:
"The difference is there, right, this possibility that it could have been this way in New York, which I think would really have changed the kind of structural vulnerability that workers are facing..." — Maich [39:27]

Behind the Scenes: Research and Surprises

[41:11] Fieldwork Anecdotes:

• Shared legal and lived realities between Peru and NY with workers in both places, fostering cross-border learning.
• Peruvian workers “surprised” that US legal protections were not more robust.
• Also, an anecdote about licensing images from Peruvian artist Jesus Ruiz Durand for the book—direct outreach led to personal connection and permission.

Quote:
"The Peruvian household workers were so surprised that the US did not have much, much better laws than they did." — Maich [41:44]

Looking Forward: Dr. Maich’s Next Projects

[45:19+] Three new areas of research:

1. Safety at work for domestic workers—exploring sexual assault risks, gaps in OSHA coverage for homes, both US and Peru.
2. Impact of paid family leave policies on maternal time use—focusing on the often-overlooked “fourth trimester” and time/stress challenges.
3. Social implications of robot technology adoption on dairy farms—qualitative and quantitative focus on sustainability and labor in Texas and Pennsylvania.

Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On the normalization of live-in domestic work in Lima:
  "In Lima, it was much more common for women to be living in with the same family for many, many years...became the household worker for those children's children." [10:53]

• On legal shortcomings and power imbalances in Peru:
  "The contract could be verbal or in written format. And that's something that...is a relationship...fraught with kind of deep power imbalance." [22:30]

• On domestic work’s overlooked skill and value:
  "This is something that a lot of groups have been tackling internally and getting those nannies trained up in order to spread the word and create a more professional understanding of this work..." [36:08]

Key Takeaways

• Comparative Approach: The book’s comparison reveals that different legal, social, and historical contexts can produce similar outcomes for domestic workers—especially precarity and limited advancement despite landmark legislation.
• Law vs. Lived Reality: Both Lima and New York demonstrate that formal laws often fall short in protecting domestic workers from exploitation, violence, and economic insecurity.
• Continued Struggle: Mobilization, collective action, and worker-led education remain vital in both cities for advancing rights and protections.
• Broader Implications: The specificity of Peruvian law vs. the universality of New York’s approach highlight divergent paths and missed opportunities for comprehensive worker protection.

Further Reading

• Book: Bringing Law Home: Gender, Race, and Household Labor Rights by Katherine Eva Maich. Stanford University Press, 2025.

End of summary.