The New Servant Problem: Paid Domestic Work, Race, and the Gendered Division of Labor

It is widely noted that our society faces widespread, unmet care needs. This problem is in part the result of a shortage of individuals-and, more specifically, of women-willing and available to perform care work. One solution to this crisis, touted by activists and policy makers alike, is to turn to the services offered by paid domestic workers such as housecleaners and nannies. I argue that we should reject this solution on the grounds that paid domestic work both relies on and replicates gender and race hierarchies. I make this argument by connecting contemporary discussion of the care crisis to historical concern about a "servant problem," which, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, referred to an undersupply of employees willing to become paid domestic workers. I argue that we must reject contemporary discourses and policy solutions that replicate the old servant problem paradigm. The fight for justice for paid domestic workers, and the search for a solution to our current crisis in care, should not naturalize and encourage paid domestic work but rather work toward a radical reconfiguration of reproductive labor and the conditions under which it is performed.