The government in Bangladesh still has not fixed a minimum wage, weekly holidays, or working hours for domestic workers. There is no public discourse around this issue either.
Domestic service is largely performed by women. Although housewives – the mistress of the home – also perform some domestic tasks, class distance, especially in middle-class urban homes, are insurmountable. While maidservants make the bed and dust the sofa, day in and day out, they are not allowed to sit or lie on them. I approached urban, middle-class housewives and told them that I wanted to take their portraits together with their housemaid, seated on the drawing room sofa. Through this work I want to break spatial taboos in urban middle-class homes, taboos which are in essence class taboos. Although the mistress and the housemaid inhabit the same domestic space, their social and economic privileges, and their ideological worth, are poles apart. I want to explore the possibility of creating bonds of intimacy among women who, according to dominant norms, are unequal. I am a believer in the reformist power of photography. Even though the duration of this constructed intimacy between the mistress of the house and her housemaid is brief, and even though the presence of a photographer at such moments is a rare occasion, I like to think that my work will help us reflect on the need to change these domestic relationships, which are not ‘natural’, but are social and historical constructs.