Navigating Family–Work Relationships during Covid-19 Pandemic: Family Domestic Workers in Rural Limpopo, South Africa

Abstract

Domestic work — one of the largest sources of employment in South Africa — is rooted in the colonial and apartheid era, during which black women worked as domestic servants for white families. In contemporary South Africa, however, domestic work is prevalent in black families, and there is a growing trend towards family domestic work: family members or close friends working as domestic workers for kin. Typical challenges in the domestic work sector include the navigation of employer–employee relationships, which shape the negotiation of other working conditions. In family domestic work, the setting is worsened by the Covid-19 pandemic and implementation of working from home. This paper draws from 15 semi-structured interviews conducted with black women working as family domestic workers. The findings suggest that family domestic work is centred in reciprocal caring — sister-maids are financially enabled to support families and sister-madams are assisted with domestic duties. Covid-19 has had an impact on family domestic work and family–work relationships, whereby sister-maids had difficulties working in the presence of sister-madams and their children. Hence, silence is adopted by sister-maids challenged by working during Covid-19. However, the pandemic also enabled some sister-maids and sister-madams to grow closer to each other, which strengthened family–work relationships.