A Very Special Job. the Representation of Domestic Work in Spanish Policy Debates

Since the late 1970s different political actors proposed reforms to Spanish domestic work legislation, which predicated that the special nature of this job required separated (and weaker) labor and social security regimes. From 1978 until the late 1990s critics argued that the existing legal framework constituted gender and labor discrimination because it illegitimately excluded domestic workers from rights that were guaranteed to the rest of the workforce. Starting in 2005, though, politicians who proposed amendments built on a different argument. They asserted that domestic workers needed better protection and professionalization to deliver necessary services for families’ work and life balance. This paper examines how these distinctive representations of domestic work as a political problem reflect changes in the institutional channels available to express the interests of domestic workers and employers. The analyses show that the large influx of international migrant women institutionally marginalized the voices of domestic workers while the work and family reconciliation policy discourse empowered employers’ institutional legitimacy. I argue that these changes are central to understand why the law reforms passed in 2011 continued to deny domestic workers equal rights on the basis of the special nature of their job.