“Housewives Assistants” A segment that hides from the eyes of society

ASO – Ahmed Damlakhy

Domestic workers “or” housewives’ assistants “are a profession whose need increases with the increasing needs of working women or the expansion of modern life, and the number of women who resort to obtain them increases in light of the deteriorating economic conditions, the causes of which have varied and the war and military operations in the region are the largest.

Domestic workers are women who help housewives with daily or seasonal cleaning, and there are many tasks that they perform, and they vary between cleaning homes and cleaning up the waste of patients, and they reach cooking, raising children or caring for the elderly for a specific wage that is daily, or they may be lucky enough to become a regular weekly Or monthly.

These women face exciting difficulties, the most important of which is the irregularity of work, the need to move from one place to another, the diversity of work owners and the risk of entering homes, in which they may face the risks of harassment or economic exploitation.

In the city of Manbij in North-East Syria, these women are living stories during their work, hidden from the eyes of society, for fear of the inferiority view multiplying.

“Rehab” is a forty-year-old woman with four children, the eldest of whom is ten years old. She lost her husband due to an incurable illness, and from here began her career as an assistant to the city’s housewives cleaning their homes.

“Rehab” tells ASO News Network that after her husband’s death, she had two options, either to choose a job and rely on herself, or to wait for help from the townspeople, but her presence in an eastern community would have accompanied the aid provided to her with humiliation, as she described, so she chose To work and to secure the livelihood of her children.

A neighbor’s request to her to help her clean her house in return for money was Rehab’s first step in this area, which was hiding many difficulties for her.

One of the most difficult situations that “Rehab” was exposed to while working as Assistant to housewives, was the accusation of stealing money from the owner of the house.

She says: “The owner of the house accused me of stealing an amount of money that she kept in her bedroom that I had never entered, and when she lost the money, and it became clear later that her husband had taken the money from her room, the lady apologized to me and paid me a sum of money as compensation, but I refused it, for those hours of horror that I lived while accused of theft was enough to allow me to give up everything I had to get rid of the accusation. ”

Domestic workers, especially if they are from the same city in which they live, suffer from the stigma of the profession as they are assessed socially, and face bullying that makes them shy about disclosing their work to people, even if they are of the same social class as her.
It is this category that hides many dark aspects in their working life, which are always highlighted through the Syrian drama, which shows them in weak and marginalized roles.

As for “Maram” (34 years old), she started working as an assistant to housewives in the city nearly three years ago. She was ill in 2018 and lost her job as a cleaner in one of the city’s institutes, but because of the difficult living situation, she chose to work from New to share with her husband the burdens of life.

Maram suffered many injuries while working as a domestic helper, the last of which was an electric shock that made her unconscious for minutes while cleaning the walls of a house. Persuading her husband to continue working after this situation was very difficult.

Fear of society and the spread of abusive speech, prevented (S.F) from disclosing the abuse and violations she was subjected to while working as a cleaning aid.

(S.F.) is a 28-year-old mother of two, whose husband left her without paying attention to her and her children and left the country, at which time she found herself alone in the face of life, with two young children, who needed much care and expenses.

Physical harassment, was one of the most serious violations that (S.F.) was subjected to at her work by the owner of a house where she worked, meanwhile she was working and at a time all the owners of the house are supposed to be outside, to be surprised later by the return of the owner of the house and his attempt to harass her.

“I wanted to tell his wife, but fear of her reaction and avoiding the scandal prevented me from disclosing it. I left work and my argument was my child’s illness,” according to S.F.

The work in cleaning houses is considered a free business, and there is no law for workers in this field to organize their work or protect them from exploitation, and there is no clause in the internal system of the Autonomous Administration that requires this category to register with them, and therefore there are also no statistics about the number of Workers in this field, according to “Asma Ramo,” the co-head of the Employment and Labor Office in the city of Manbij.

And “Ramo” added that they have not yet received any complaint or case related to what the housemaids are exposed to, and the most prominent reason may be that the workers in this field see themselves as the weaker party in addition to the fear of people talking about them.

The existence of a law that protects women in any field in which they work remains the solution to rid them of the difficulties they face, in addition to society’s awareness of the importance of women’s work and not looking at them as guilty of any problem encountered in their path.

This article is published in cooperation with the Syrian Women Journalists Network