Mexico prepares to elect its first woman head of state, while thousands and thousands of domestic employees wonder if it can improve ‘modern slavery’

Alejo, 43, puts on makeup and leaves her tiny apartment on the outskirts of Mexico City on a Tuesday morning. She walks until the cracked gravel outside her house turns to cobblestones and the campaign signs on the small concrete buildings are replaced by the pristine partitions of the gated communities of town’s upper class.

Here, Alejo worked quietly for 26 years as a cleaner within the homes of rich Mexicans and raised their children.

Alejo is considered one of around 2.5 million Mexicans – mostly women – who work as domestic employees within the Latin American country, a career that embodies the gender and sophistication segregation that has long prevailed in Mexico.

Women like her play a fundamental role in Mexican society, bearing the burden of domestic work as more women enter the workforce. Despite reforms under the present government, many domestic employees proceed to face poor pay, abuse by employers, and long working hours. It’s an establishment that dates back to colonial times, and a few researchers equate the unstable working conditions with “modern slavery.”

Now that Mexico may elect its first female president on June 2, housekeepers are hoping that either former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum or former Senator Xóchitl Gálvez could shift the balance of their favor.

“I have never voted in all these years because for us it is the same no matter who wins. … When have they ever listened to us, why should I give them my vote?” said Alejo. “If there is at least one woman, maybe it will be different.”

Alejo was born right into a poor family within the central Mexican state of Puebla. At the age of 14, she dropped out of faculty and moved to Mexico City to work as a nanny with two sisters.

“It’s like being a mother. The kids would call me ‘mommy,'” she said. “I would bathe them, take care of them, do everything from the moment I wake up to the moment they sleep.”

While some domestic employees live aside from their families, many more live with their families and work for weeks and even months and not using a break and in isolation from family and friends.

Alejo said the demands and poor pay of home tasks have led her to not have children herself. Others told The Associated Press they were fired after becoming ailing and asking their employers for help.

“When you work in someone else’s house, your life is not your own,” says Carolina Solana de Dios, a 47-year-old nanny who lives in another person’s house.

Their help is significant for working women like 49-year-old single mother Claudia Rodríguez as they proceed to struggle to interrupt into profession fields traditionally dominated by men. In Mexico and far of Latin America, there has long been a gender gap within the workplace. In 2005, 80 percent of men were employed or in search of a job, compared with 40 percent of ladies, Mexican government data show.

This gap has narrowed over time, but large differences in salary and leadership roles remain.

Rodríguez was born in a town two hours outside of Mexico City. She fled her abusive father along with her mother and siblings and sought refuge within the capital. Instead of pursuing her dream of becoming knowledgeable dancer, she began working and studying in order to not should make “the same sacrifice” as her mother, who toiled in various informal jobs.

She worked her way up within the IT industry for years, but took on all of the home tasks when she and her husband had children. When her husband left her for one more woman six years ago, hiring a live-in domestic helper was the one thing she could do to make ends meet.

Today, she and her nanny, Irma, each stand up at 5 a.m. One makes lunch for her two daughters while the opposite drops them off in school.

“We women in business cannot handle all of this alone because society’s expectations are simply too high,” she says.

Yet unprecedented numbers of Mexican women are taking over leadership roles, thanks partly to gender quota laws for political parties. Since 2018, there was a 50-50 gender balance in Mexico’s Congress, and the variety of female governors has skyrocketed.

Although neither presidential candidate spoke explicitly about domestic employees, each Sheinbaum and Gálvez proposed combating violence against women and shutting the gender pay gap within the country.

In 2019, the federal government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador passed a landmark law granting domestic employees basic rights equivalent to paid leave, limits on working hours and access to employer-paid medical health insurance.

But the federal government’s failure to implement these rules would go away domestic employees defenseless and trapped in a “dynamic of power inequality,” says Norma Palacios, president of the country’s domestic employees’ union, SINACTRAHO.

“Nothing has changed … even if on paper we should have more workers’ rights,” Palacios said.

Neither Alejo, a housekeeper, nor Rodríguez, a single mother, say they particularly discover with any of the candidates on the ballot. Both plan to vote. Although they see the 2 leading candidates as just one other member of the identical party, they agree with Palacios when he says that having a lady at the highest can be a crucial step.

“It is still a woman who will be at the head of a country – a sexist country, a country of inequality, a country of violence against women, a country of femicide,” Palacios said.

Meanwhile, employees like Alejo proceed to navigate shaky ground.

According to SINACTRAHO data, Alejo is among the many 98% of domestic employees who don’t yet have medical health insurance.

She finally works for a pleasant family that pays her a good wage, but she gathers up the courage to ask the family to pay for her medical health insurance because she fears that she shall be replaced if she demands that her rights be respected.

“They don’t like you asking for things,” she said. “It’s not easy to find work, and when you have to work, you end up taking whatever they give you.”