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Amaid,housemaid, ormaidservant is a femaledomestic worker. In theVictorian era, domestic service was the second-largest category of employment in England and Wales, after agricultural work.[1] In developed Western nations, full-time maids are now typically only found in the wealthiest households. In other parts of the world (mainly within the continent of Asia), maids remain common in urban middle-class households.
Maid inMiddle English meant an unmarried woman, especially a young one, or specifically avirgin. These meanings lived on in English until recent times (and are still familiar from literature and folk music), alongside the sense of the word as a type of servant.[2][3]
Maids perform typical domestic chores such aslaundry,ironing,cleaning the house, grocery shopping,cooking, and caring for household pets. They may alsotake care of children, although there are more specific occupations for this, such asnanny. In some poor countries, maids take care of the elderly and people with disabilities. Many maids are required by their employers to wear auniform.
In the contemporaryWestern world, comparatively few households can afford live-in domestic help, usually relying oncleaners, employed directly or through an agency (maid service). Many services historically provided by maids have beensubstituted withhome appliances.
In less developed nations, various factors ensure a labour source for domestic work: very large differences in the income of urban and rural households, widespread poverty, fewereducated women, and limited opportunities for the employment of less educated women.
Legislation in many countries makes certain living conditions, working hours, or minimum wage a requirement of domestic service. Nonetheless, the work of a maid has always been hard, involving a full day, and extensive duties. Maids would be familiar with hard work and typically worked long hours in a week.[4]
Maids were once part of an elaborate hierarchy ingreat houses, where theretinue of servants stretched up to the housekeeper and butler, responsible for female and male employees respectively. It was the best and most common way that women could earn money, especially lower class women.[5] The word "maid" itself means an unmarried young woman or virgin. Domestic workers, particularly those low in the hierarchy, such as maids andfootmen, were expected to remain unmarried while in service.[6][7] They had their own section of rooms in the house, though they were far away from the other rooms and weren’t anywhere near as nice as the rest of the house.[8]
Some households employed maids-of-all-work as young as twelve in the 19th century in England and they often worked from five in the morning until late in the evening on a wage of £6 to £9 per year.[9] They had no free time and typically only had one or two days off in a month.[10]
In Victorian England, all middle-class families would have "help", but for most small households, this would be only one employee, the maid of all work, often known colloquially as "the girl".
Historically, many maids suffered fromprepatellar bursitis, an inflammation of theprepatellar bursa caused by long periods spent on the knees for purposes of scrubbing and fire-lighting, leading to the condition attracting the colloquial name of "housemaid's knee".[11]
As the end of the nineteenth century neared, the relationship between employer and servant grew more and more distant and they were less loyal.[5] At the end of the nineteenth century, there was a decline in the want for maids and other servants entirely, which has led to today when the majority of people don’t have maids.[12]
Today, foreign women are employed inSaudi Arabia,Kuwait,Qatar,Singapore,Hong Kong,Japan andUnited Arab Emirates in large numbers to work as maids or other roles of domestic service, and are often vulnerable to multiple forms of abuse.[13][14][15] Anayi (aunt in Mandarin) works as a domestic helper in China, and occasionally provides personalized childcare.
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In some areas in the region, the word "maid" is avoided. This is most likely due to the fact that it sounds like a racially derogatory term inAfrikaans.[16] Maids in South Africa were referred to as domestic servants and they included men, women, and children. They were subject to low wages, lack of a social life, unfavorable working conditions, and even unaccommodating work hours.[17] The Afrikaans word for a mite (small arachnid) has been used demeaningly to refer to women of colour. The English word for a friend, "mate", is also avoided for this reason.
Maids traditionally have a fixed position in the hierarchy of the large households, and although there is overlap between definitions (dependent on the size of the household), the positions themselves would typically be rigidly adhered to. The usual classifications of maid in a large household are:
In more modest households, a singlemaid-of-all-work orskivvy was often the only staff. It is possible this word originates from the Italian for slave ("schiavo"—"owned person").
One of the most in-depth and enduring representations of the lives of several types of maid was seen in the 1970s television dramaUpstairs, Downstairs, set inEngland between 1903 and 1936. The lives of maids were well represented in theDownton Abbey series, set in England between 1912 and 1926 and shown from 2010 onward.
The American television dramaThe Gilded Age, set in the 1880s inNew York City, depicts the lives of maids living and working in the great houses of theera.
The main characters in theNAMIC Vision Award-nominated television seriesDevious Maids are four housemaids.
Media related toMaid at Wikimedia Commons
Quotations related toMaid at Wikiquote
The dictionary definition ofmaid at WiktionaryAuthority control databases: National |
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