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Katherine Eva Maich, "Bringing Law Home: Gender, Race, and Household Labor Rights" (Stanford UP, 2025)
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The New Books Network.
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Hello and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today to be speaking with Dr. Catherine Eva Mach about her book titled Bringing Law, Gender, Race and Household Labor Rights, published by Stanford University Press in 2025. Now this book is really interesting for the number of different things it's all doing at once and without being like 800 pages long. This is actually quite a readable insight into what it is like to be a domestic worker in two different places, New York City and Lima, Peru, which are not places we necessarily compare that often. But as this book helps us understand if we do that comparison looking both in terms of more current issues but also historically, the labor struggles of domestic workers are actually really interesting to look at through this perspective. We're going to be talking about gender, race, history, urban politics, all sorts of things get involved in this discussion. So Katherine, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast to tell us about your book.
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A
Oh, thank you for having Me. Miranda, could you please start us off.
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By introducing yourself a little bit and tell us why you decided to write the book and what questions are you asking it?
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A
Sure. Thank you. So I'm an assistant professor of sociology at Texas A and M University. I'm also a faculty affiliate in Women's and Gender Studies here, and I have a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, in sociology. When I studied there, I was a Berkeley Empirical Legal Studies fellow, which really enabled me to kind of gain some new knowledge on critical legal studies and really bring that into this book. But my work overall focuses on law, on gender and work, labor, social policy, and ethnography in both the global south as well as in the us and we also sort of see that comparison play out in the book. I've long been interested in service work, the work of maids and nannies and housekeepers and house cleaners. But I wasn't actually that familiar with this kind of work until I started my master's at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. And I had the opportunity to interview housekeepers at Mount Holyoke College nearby in Western Mass. And talk to them about their experiences of work and their experiences of being unionized, you know, organized in a union, and kind of what that union experience gave them in terms of bringing dignity and respect to the job and kind of having solidarity with. With their fellow housekeepers at work. And I got really interested in, you know, who does this kind of work in other places. And this was a group of largely white older women. And it's really not the face of most surface work around the world and in other parts of the us and so that interest really started in my master's project. And I brought that with me out to UC Berkeley when I started my PhD in Sociology and doctorate studies. And my world really became much more global. At UC Berkeley, there was just such global thinking. Our faculty really encouraged us to consider broad global comparative projects. And we had a weekly colloquium series that just really opened my eyes to kind of the fascinating big questions that sociology could tackle. And considering myself as someone sociologist in training was really exciting. And so I decided to construct this comparative study between one Latin American country, which is, of course, is Lima, Peru, focusing on the capital 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.
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B
I mean, I'm coming from a background as a comparative historian, so I love hearing about programs that emphasize comparative analysis and this choice that you've made of Lima and New York is really interesting. So you just mentioned kind of a key reason that New York was one of the sites you chose. Can you tell us more about why you chose Lima?
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Yeah. So Lima is fascinating city. You know, it in some ways, it kind of represents all of Peru, and it's also blamed for being too European or not Peruvian enough throughout literature and throughout history. And there's really kind of a disparity between Lima and the rest of the country in terms of kind of the wealth that's concentrated there, of course, the density. You know, Peru isn't a country where there's a number of other large cities that are really drawing the population out. You know, it's really still very concentrated in Lima, where roughly a third of the country's population lives. But interestingly enough, you know, in terms of the historical significance, right, Lima was the site of the Spanish crown. And, you know, you really can sort of see its colonial past as you walk through El Centro, you know, in its downtown area, right by where the kind of governmental, administrative buildings are. You know, you see, these homes that were constructed for the Limeno elite still remain even in the kind of dusty, dusty nature that the fog and kind of constant lack of rain creates over time. But, you know, it was really important for me to think about this comparison in a way that would highlight kind of similarities and differences between both the laws as well as the population of domestic workers. So for Lima, you know, it's. It's a countrywide law, so it is passed at that level and applies throughout all of Peru. But it really kind of really, you know, has most kind of. It kind of finds its way in Lima because of the fact that this is where so much domestic work is really concentrated. So the fact that it's this former site of the Spanish crown, it has this really rich, important colonial history, and it still remains a site where, you know, women, especially women and young girls, are coming in from the poor. You know, the highlands, the countryside, the selva. They are coming into the city in order to find work to, you know, improve their lives and better their family's lives as domestic workers. Right. This is one of the industries that has kind of the easiest barriers to entry, right? So this is something where women can find these jobs, start working, and earn a salary that's significantly higher, you know, than they were earning in the countryside. So it's much more centralized in Peru, and we have this kind of generational pattern of domestic work in Lima that's really different than what we see in New York, where there's Almost a, almost a taboo a bit about, you know, having a nanny or having a maid. And of course, you know, many, many families do, but it's not sort of expected the same way as we might, as we see in Lima, where just kind of generations of families often have, you know, actually a live in worker. Right. And that's very expected, very normalized, and something that just kind of comes with the territory of even being, you know, middle class. Right. This isn't a practice that's reserved for, you know, the, the elite who are earning, you know, in this kind of top 10% of, of incomes. Right. But in fact, it's a much more normal practice for families. Lima also has a kind of much more stable population than New York. Right. We see many, for instance, of the domestic workers in New York that I interviewed would have SW families over time as their employers. Children grew up and they were in school and they were no longer needed the same way. And maybe the family left Manhattan for Brooklyn and then left Brooklyn for New Jersey. Right. A kind of pattern we would see sometimes or different parts of Brooklyn and Queens and then moved out to the suburbs. And often they needed a domestic worker who could drive. And this just wasn't a skill that many of the domestic workers I spoke to, you know, had or had reason to have learned. Right. Living for most of their lives, you know, in New York City proper. Right. And so they would often then have to kind of restart that search and find a new family. Whereas in Lima, it was much more common for women to be living in with the same family for many, many years. You know, I spoke to a lot of women in their 60s, sometimes early 70s, who maybe had started off with one or two families, but then kind of found their way and stayed with the family until the children were grown and then maybe even became the household worker for those children's children. Right. Sort of looking after grandkids at that stage. And that was a really kind of stark contrast as well between the two cities. So we have this really heterogeneous population in New York, you know, this, you know, huge. You know, we have so many immigrants coming from different backgrounds and countries coming in. It's a really vibrant domestic worker movement there. So the women who are doing the domestic work as well as the employers themselves are all from these highly heterogeneous backgrounds. Whereas in Peru, it's really a kind of different story, you know, of these more mestiza indigenous women coming in, you know, young girls, internal migrants, and then really working for mestizo or limeno Employers of that working class or upper. Upper middle class or then, of course, you know, elite families. I should also say, in both sites, it was really interesting to interview domestic workers who worked for foreigners or who worked for expats in Lima. Right. And this was really interesting to kind of get their own comparisons about who is the better employer. Right. Is it, you know, a Peruvian or is it, in fact, someone who's maybe a diplomat or, you know, living in Lima for a shorter time? And we also see big changes that have happened in Lima since I did this research with influx of the Venezuelan migration. Right. So that's really changed kind of the dynamics there as well. So these cities, you know, have very different political histories. You know, importantly, you know, different political histories at the same time that the regulation that we see that both places have enacted really results in this similar income. So I was curious about trying to look at, you know, social consequences of law, you know, how the law can actually try to regulate the space that we think of as kind of sacred, a refuge, our home. Right. It's really not understood as a specific or as a site of labor, you know, even though it is a really specific site of labor. And to really understand what happens when we try to bring law home in both of those places. And what I really see happen is that, you know, this results in fairly similar outcomes in both places, which was pretty surprising to me in some ways, kind of having this similar outcome result.
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B
Yeah, that is surprising, especially given what you've just told us about outlining very helpfully the kind of different context of both cities in terms of who is performing this sort of labor and in what sorts of environments. It is sort of really interesting to hear that there are some key similarities there, especially from the perspective of kind of what the law is doing both on. On paper and socially. So can you tell us more about what sorts of things the law is trying to solve in both of these cities in terms of, you know, we usually think about, like, vulnerability, legal or structural concerns that domestic workers face. Are they similar in these two? Otherwise, in many ways, very different contexts.
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A
Yeah, this is. This is excellent. Thanks. So one thing I should just preface by saying, you know, the New York, the Domestic Worker Bill of Rights came about in 2010. It is not as strong as many of the domestic workers who I spoke with, who had organized for it, who had worked hard and lobbied, you know, for years, you know, to make this happen. It's not as strong as they had hoped. So what was interesting about doing the research and kind of uncovering These conversations that lawmakers had about the law and ideas around certain tenets that almost made it, or as one, one domestic worker I spoke with talked about kind of, they fell to the cutting floor, right? They didn't quite make the final, the final cut for the law. And so in the end, the New York law is doing a lot, but in fact, maybe not as much as workers hoped. So it's bringing laws in, it's bringing domestic workers, excuse me, into minimum wage coverage, which is really important. It's recognizing overtime pay for domestic workers depending upon if they live in versus if they live out, if they're employed by an agency versus being employed by a private household. And then importantly, they're also granted days of rest. So domestic workers in New York are given three paid days of rest each year after they've worked for the same employer for one year, and they are brought into protection under the human rights law, New York State human rights law. And then there's also a creation of special clause of action for domestic workers who have suffered sexual or racial harassment. So, you know, that's a really important precedent setting kind of declaration, right, that the law is trying to govern there and trying to recognize because domestic workers, unfortunately, are often subject to sexual harassment, sexual violence. You know, I saw this unfortunately in my interviews as well. At the same time, you know, it's a lot less specific than the Peruvian household workers law. So something fascinating to me is that the Peruvian law really brings in employers and it talks about the obligations of employers and the responsibility of workers. And it's much more of a kind of dynamic conversation, a kind of interplay, right, between the employers and their household workers. And in this way, it's much more specific about the home as a site of labor and trying to kind of get at the heart of what goes on there. So, for instance, if I could read one article of the law, the Peruvian law, Article 4, says workers are obligated to be diligent and private about what goes on in the employer's home unless required by law to do otherwise. You know, and I think this, this article is really interesting because it's recognizing that domestic workers themselves, they are part of the household. They're part of the life of the household, right? The kind of good, bad and ugly. They, you know, they're there in the morning making breakfast for kids. They see if there's an argument between, you know, the, the couple of the home, right. They see kind of the ins and outs of, of what's happening in this space in this really private, sacred Space of the home itself. And yet, you know, the law is interested in protecting the employers in this sense. Right. You know, workers need to be quiet and, you know, kind of keep silent about what they see there. And then kind of, you know, the. The contrary part of this, which, you know, I found really telling, is that the law that I studied of 2003 says nothing about that sexual violence or sexual assault or abuses that domestic workers often suffer, especially when they're living in, you know, which unfortunately is not a thing of the past. Right. This is still really common. This is still happening, you know, today. And we actually. There's actually a case in Lima just last year where a young domestic worker actually tried to jump out of a theater, the third story of an apartment, in order to escape the employer's son, who had already assaulted her after she'd only been on the job for a couple of weeks. So, you know, this is. This is a reality, right, that domestic workers are facing. Of course, not all of them, but many of them. And it's part of the structural vulnerability, you know, of the job. Right. Of the industry. When you step into this place, that's a work site, but not recognized as such. I'm Ashley Graham, and as a parent, I know the back to school transition can be a lot when it comes to wellness. Ollie supports me and my family through it all. Kids, multi is big in my house. It supports their immune system and they love to take it. A win, win for everyone. Shop these products@ollie.com or retailers nationwide. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
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So I want to talk more about some of these laws in particular, especially you mentioned the New York law wasn't entirely what people organizing for it hoped for. So I wonder if we can go over to Lima to talk about the law in that case, or at least a particularly key law. I know there have been more than one, but there's a law you talk about in the book that was passed in 2003 that really seemed to be pretty seminal. So can you tell us a bit about sort of why there was a need for the law? Like how did we get to the point of having this law? And to what extent was it seen as answering the goals of the people who organized for it?
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Yeah, this is an excellent question. So the law was the product of decades of organizing and it built upon previous labor law, Right? As most laws do, it kind of builds upon what was there before in important ways. So there was actually minimal labor legislation for household workers as early as 1957 in Peru, but this was just sort of the most basic protections. Thirteen years later there was another, the Creto Supremo that was passed. And this offered overtime pay and eight hours of nightly rest, which was really important, especially for live in workers. It also gave the 24 contiguous hours of rest on Sunday or another day of the week, 15 vacation days per year. And this really came from General Juan Velasco Alvarado's revolution from above, which was really trying to quell kind of popular unrest. So there was sweeping agrarian reform that was happening. A lot of, you know, a lot of huge notable changes that was going on at the same time. That law only said that household workers should really be receiving half of the benefits of workers in the private sector. Right. And so when the 2003 law came about, this is, you know, over during organizing during Fujimori's dictatorship and all the complications there for workers. And, you know, amidst a lot of oppression, they were finally able to push this Forward throughout the 90s and then get this passed in 2003. And one central organization organizer, one central organization in this was the Centro de Capacitacion para Trabajadores de Logar. And this group really led the struggle for household workers more broadly in Lima. And what was really important was that when it was passed, it was passed by the first indigenous democratically elected president, Alejandro Toledo, in Peruvian history. So this was a really key moment for the law to come about and what it tried to do was, as I briefly mentioned earlier, you know, talk much more specifically through 18 different tenets about all kinds of benefits and contractual obligations for workers and for employers. However, on the topic of contracts, the law unfortunately does not actually guarantee any kind of written contract. So it says that this should be decided at kind of mutual accord between the domestic worker and her employer, which we know is a relationship very sought by, very fraught with kind of deep power imbalance, but that the contract could be verbal or in written format. And that's something that, as you mentioned, Randa, this later law that was just passed recently in 2020, that this actually did change and instantiated the need to have a written contract. Though of course there's still kind of widespread employer non compliance that more recent research has also kind of shown. There's also, you know, a real lack of awareness about the new law even, you know, four or five years after, after it's passed and gone into effect. But the Peruvian law, you know, does mention a number of different tenants that are really important. And one example of that is, you know, getting gratificationes, so getting bonus pay twice a year. So that's paid in July for Peruvians, Independence Day and as well as one time in December around the Christmas holiday. And so that's a really unique kind of addition that's actually much more common in Latin American countries in terms of domestic worker legislation, but certainly not something that we would see legislated in the.
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B
US this is really interesting to understand and especially as you said, the new law that's kind of closing one of the things that was left out of the 2003 law. This is clearly very much a live and ongoing issue. And it's not something that, as you said, kind of starts in 2000. It's drawing on a much longer history. And you discuss in the book that some elements of the history are of course, things that we've already mentioned, like unfortunately, experiences of sexual assault, issues around class you briefly mentioned earlier in our conversation, issues around sort of identity or racialization, for example, indigenous women in Lima. And do we see still some of those perhaps patterns that we would think of as being older, as being, quote, unquote, just historical around race or class or questions of citizenship and nationality. Are those also still live issues in terms of what this legislation was trying to do?
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Yes, and exactly. And just as you mentioned, you know, that's something I love about studying, you know, kind of living, breathing social movement and seeing the way that laws build upon each other. And there's really kind of an iterative process, right, that happens between the legislation, its effects, its consequences, and then future organizing and future demands, and then responses from the state in this really fascinating way. And so, yeah, to your point about the deep kind of racialization and how we see that play out through the law, I found that, you know, at play in Lima based upon the way that domestic workers are really understood as kind of second class citizens, based on the fact that many of them are mestiza, indigenous, coming from Quecha or Aymara backgrounds, Spanish maybe not their first language. And even in kind of coming to Lima, you know, the central kind of, you know, metropolis of the, of the country, they're really understood to be kind of other due to the fact that geography and race kind of go together in Lima. So in a sense, they're. They're recognized as less than, not only because of their race and ethnicity and their, their backgrounds, but also because of kind of where they've come from. And that also changes accents. And we see the way that the law kind of recognizes or fails to recognize domestic workers as equal in the sense that, for instance, it does prescribe the fact that employers should be paying for domestic workers education if they are of school age. Right. If they are young enough to not be a child domestic worker, but of school age. And the way that this played out. Well, first, it's a very kind of hearkening to a colonial past. Right. The employer's kind of responsible for almost the upbringing and the well being of these workers as part of their part of the home. Right. Part of their kind of part of their. The employer is really, you know, responsible for these workers. Right. As part of the kind of colonial home in some sense. But how I saw this play out is that domestic workers are going to night schools across the city that are kind of dimly lit, overcrowded, taught by, you know, teachers who are trying. Right. But who are underpaid and fairly unenthusiastic about educational process and pedagogy and that it's really tough for younger girls to complete their studies when they've been cleaning a home all day and doing the kind of difficult labor that household work is.
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Yeah, that's definitely a difficult position to be in and try to kind of have it all, try and sort of tick all of these boxes all at the same time. What happens then if we move to New York? You mentioned right at the beginning of our conversation that one of the reasons you chose to focus on it was because of some of the really landmark legislation that it had in this sort of area. Can you tell us specifically about the domestic bill of Rights and similarly to what you've just told us about with Peru? What does it do and what does it not do?
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A
Yeah. So, you know, immigrant workers have really shaped the practices of domestic work in New York for. For centuries. And this is an industry that many different immigrant women would enter into upon migrating to the US and the same is true today. Around 80% of New York's population of domestic workers were born outside of the country. And so they really bring these immigrant backgrounds with them to the work and to their important demands for labor rights claims. So one of the things that we see with the law is that the law, interestingly enough, does nothing to talk about immigration status or authorization status, documentation status, but it instead actually puts the onus of that immigration status onto the employer. This results in what I call immigrant domesticity in New York, where we see that the law grants negligible protections to workers. It eschews any kind of language around immigration, and 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. So instead of improving working conditions, the fact that it says nothing about workers, immigrant status, or offers any protections around that really leaves domestic workers quite vulnerable. And what I saw, though, you know, through my interviews and through my work with different groups in New York, is that this doesn't slow them down. Right. They are constantly organizing, they are constantly demanding workplace rights, and they're using tenets of the law to negotiate with their employers on a kind of one on one basis. Right. Because this work is done, you know, often behind closed doors in the privacy of the home. Right. They don't have that kind of solidarity of an worker organization that they may be part of, but they're able to bring the terms of the New York Domestic Worker Bill of Rights into their own negotiations with employers and, you know, ask for higher pay or ask for written contracts or ask for those days off and to sort of use the law as a floor from which to, you know, bargain and gain more worker power and protections.
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- [33:50]
B
This is really interesting, what you're telling us about New York and in fact, I'd love for you to tell us a bit more about the city before I ask you to do some more comparison between your two case studies. It's clear that organizing and kind of collective action is a really key part of what's made any of these changes. Even if they're not perfect yet, who knows any of these changes possible? So can you tell us a bit more about what sorts of organising domestic workers are doing, have been doing and what kinds of impacts they're maybe aiming for?
- [34:23]
A
Sure, absolutely. So, yeah, the work continues. Right. People who do this kind of work and who study the industry often say domestic work is the work that makes all other work possible. Right. And it also, you know, to me looks like work that just doesn't stop. There's a kind of continual need to be working as a nanny, house cleaner, housekeeper, maid, et cetera, but also to be organizing for stronger labor rights. Or like the New York example I raised earlier about workers kind of using the law to kind of reframe their discussions with employers and negotiate. You know, it's really important to be able to bring forward the law and these tenants in certain ways in talks with employers. So there's a lot of worker training and education that's been happening across the city. And Cornell University's ILR School has done a lot of this through the Worker Institute, which really was very supportive of me when I was doing my fieldwork there. And they have one training called the We Rise Nanny training. And this is a really interesting training that brings forward kind of workers rights education with professional development using popular education. And this helps certain nannies who want to become trainers to then kind of, you know, do the trainings and workshops for other nannies. So it's really trying to give them those professional development skills that will help their negotiation skills with employers, help them to increase their employability with employers. Right. And this was actually beginning when I was interviewing workers in the city and they would talk about having the certificate from Cornell and what that meant to them and how they would proudly tell future employers that they had gone through these trainings and had this certification and the kind of step up that gave them professionally. And this is something that I'm really interest. Interested more broadly and kind of how to build leadership within the domestic worker movement. And 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 because it requires so many skills. And I think that's something that is often overlooked when we think about the industry of domestic work.
- [36:55]
B
And this is something you mentioned earlier with the recent laws in Lima as well, that there's part of the issue is about people not being aware.
- [37:02]
A
Right.
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B
Of just kind of needing to raise awareness on these sorts of things. So that's definitely one similarity that seems even quite current between the two cities. But were there any other key sort of similarities or really notable differences that you saw in comparing these two cities in terms of what the laws were doing, how they were influencing people? Anything we haven't mentioned yet or you want to emphasize further?
- [37:27]
A
Yeah, thanks. I think one thing I'd love to emphasize is just that the fact that some of the conversations around the law in New York City were really influenced through other sectors of the global domestic worker movement. So, for instance, these conversations around contracts in the New York law that actually was influenced by contracts that are used for domestic workers in Hong Kong. And, you know, if you think how differently things might have shaken out. Right. If they had been able to pass it with these, you know, written contracts included in the legal you know, legislation. At the same time, I think it's also interesting to point out that the conversations around severance are really different. And this was also a possibility that was going to be built into the New York law where workers would have two weeks of severance pay if they were to leave or have to, you know, quit their job for some reason, as long as it was nothing around, kind of a serious violation of some kind. And this, this did not make it into the final law yet. It has been part of the Peruvian law since 2003. And what's really remarkable is that that severance pay built in, you know, is able to give domestic workers in Lima, you know, a bit of income in their pocket as they're looking for another job. You know, a bit of confidence that, you know, they have that money for a certain set of time. At the same time, what. What I would see happen in New York is that because this was not, you know, legislated or, you know, part of any real employer employee contract, what would happen is that domestic workers would just, you know, show up one day and all of a sudden, maybe the grandmother was coming in to visit after a new baby arrived, or maybe circumstances had changed in that family's home to the point where they no longer needed this worker, but she really had, you know, nowhere to go and no income to kind of hold her over during the job search. And so what workers would. Would share with me is that sometimes they'd be given, you know, some old clothes or a really nice fancy designer bag, you know, as kind of a send off. But what, in fact, they wanted, right, was some severance pay and a letter of recommendation that would help connect them to future employment. So 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 there, especially given that many of them are immigrant workers. What's really exciting, I think, about comparative work, to be able to see that in practice in Peru and to kind of not just have to imagine, but to recognize the effects of that in practice there.
- [40:30]
B
Yeah, that's such a powerful aspect of doing comparative work. So thank you for highlighting that. I wonder if I can ask you a bit about the behind the scenes of figuring this all out and putting it all together. Obviously, so much detailed work went into this, and I often find when I get to speak to authors whose work involves that kind of engagement at such an intensive level, that sometimes they come across things that maybe don't always end up in the book may not be kind of the big main argument, but are really sort of interesting or surprising aspects that if I didn't ask you about the behind the scenes process, the rest of us may never get to hear about. So is there anything like that in your case you'd like to share with us?
- [41:12]
A
Sure. Thank you, Miranda. Something that I saw in Lima was that, you know, I was part of a law, labor law workshop on the Peruvian household workers law every Sunday morning, morning for the duration of my. Of my field work. And I came to first be a participant, then sort of co. Teach the class, then I would actually run it on my own. And what was interesting was that I was able to share with the Peruvian household workers the situation of New York's domestic workers that I had spoken with. Right. And kind of share information about the law and stories of their struggles. And, and the Peruvian household workers were so surprised that the US did not have much, much better laws than they did. And, you know, I found that really interesting. They were just, you know, sitting there saying what, you know, the, you know, and I said, no, no, that's, that's the thing. It's actually much less specific, fewer guarantees around, you know, a whole host of worker protections and benefits. And it also is. Was much more recent. Right. It took longer to get this law of this nature passed in the United States. So it was really interesting to be able to kind of share this kind of interplay between the two sites because I completed my fieldwork initially in Lima and then I moved to New York City to do my fieldwork there. But then I went back for revisits in both places as well as kind of field revisits in the years that have passed since. And so it's been really great, I think, to kind of of bring together these stories of struggle and success, you know, in ways that might be surprising or perhaps inspiring to workers who are more bound to, you know, a different location and don't have that connection or communication with workers in other places.
- [43:08]
B
That's a really cool way that the comparative work kind of has an additional aspect to it. Thank you so much for sharing.
- [43:13]
A
Sure. And if I could just share a brief anecdote, if that's all right. One interesting part of kind of finishing the book was actually trying to get permissions from the various artists and architects whose work I draw from in the text. One of them is a Peruvian artist, Jesus Ruiz Durand, who wrote, who created a series of really fascinating prints on the agrarian reform that Peru went through. And I went through A long search. I actually saw these prints in a museum, you know, in Latin America for the first time. Then I think later I saw them in a museum in Houston. And I ended up contacting all these different museums and trying to get permissions through which I could possibly, possibly ask to, you know, have one of these, one of these prints, you know, reprinted in the book to really kind of show the importance of the struggles around land, around workers rights that were taking place during this time across the country. And in the end, I was actually able to just contact the artist himself, who lives in Miraflores in a, you know, lovely part of the city where I also resided when I lived there, and had a great conversation about the book, told him why I was interested in using these prints and what they signified to me about worker struggles and the accomplishments that have happened around the country to better household workers rights and conditions. And he was really lovely and very willing to allow me to use those prints in the book. And I look forward to sending him a copy very soon.
- [45:03]
B
That's a lovely way to end our discussion on the book. I do have, however, a final question before I let you go. What might you be looking to work on now that this book is done? Any upcoming projects, whether or not they're related to this, whether or not they're books? Anything you want to give us a sneak preview of?
- [45:19]
A
Yeah, I would love to. So in terms of a sneak preview, I am actually writing a piece now that's looking more at safety at work for domestic workers. So really specifically focusing in on how maids and nannies and caregivers face sexual assault on the job, both in Peru and in New York City. So in the U.S. you know, we have OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health act of 1970. And OSHA has long been, you know, considered underfunded. The ratio of inspectors to workplaces right now is actually fewer than 2,000 inspectors for more than 8 million workplaces. So you can imagine it's very, very challenging to actually get those inspectors into workplaces. But of course, we go back to the home, right? And private homes are of course not on this list. They're not legally recognized as such. And so workers face these kind of lack of protections and severe vulnerability when kind of stepping, you know, behind closed doors in employers homes. And so I'm interested in drawing attention to this fact and kind of sharing some highlights of my research there. At the same time, another new project that I'm really excited about is a project that looks at the impact of paid family leave policies on Maternal time use. So this, this idea is that, you know, in the US Context, right, we're the only advanced economy in the global north where we don't have, you know, guaranteed paid leave provisions, right, for our workforce. So what this, what this happens, right, is that this is often kind of provided at the benevolence of employers or the discretion of employers, which can really result in inequalities in access to paid family leave, especially for those workers who are most economically challenged and struggling. So what I'm interested in this project is to try to see what happens when new moms especially have paid family leave and what this means for their time in that really interesting kind of fourth trimester after having a new baby. So we're looking, we're using American Time Use Survey to do this project because, you know, time is a finite resource, right. And many working parents have to really make these difficult decisions about how to best spend their limited time when they're, you know, caring for their children, doing their work, but also caring for themselves. And that can really create, you know, challenges for mental health as well as physical health of new moms and their psychological well being. So that's one project that we're looking at. And then a third area that I'm really excited about is actually a project with folks in animal science here at Texas A and M, as well as rural sociology colleagues at Penn State. And we're looking to evaluate the social implications of robotic technology adoption in dairy farms. So what this means is that we're bringing a qualitative and quantitative approach to studying cows wearing, you know, where the use of wearable technology for cows on dairy farms. And we're curious about the role that these technologies play for the dairy industry more broadly for a, with a focus on kind of human safety and welfare for the farm workers themselves. And we're doing a kind of comparison between Texas and Pennsylvania, which I'm really excited about this idea of kind of hoping to promote sustainability practices in dairy farms by addressing these broader concerns we may have with technology use.
- [49:05]
B
Okay, those sound like a whole bunch of very interesting projects. Best of luck to you and your co workers in pursuing them.
- [49:11]
A
Thank you so much, Miranda, and thanks for the wonderful questions today. I really enjoyed talking about this book.
- [49:17]
B
Well, any listeners who want to know more about what we've been discussing can read the book titled Bringing Law, Gender, Race and Household Labor Rights, published by Stanford University Press in 2025. Katherine, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
- [49:31]
A
Thank you so much for having me. It was really a pleasure.
- [49:45]
C
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