Abstract
The landscape of paid domestic work has changed considerably in recent years with
the growth of housecleaning service companies in South Africa and elsewhere.
Housecleaning service companies transform domestic work into a service economy
where trained domestic workers render a professional cleaning service to clients. In
South Africa, little is known on what factors employers of housecleaning services
companies take into consideration during the selection and recruitment process. A key
feature of paid domestic work is the gender, class and race constructions of domestic
workers, with the vast majority of them being women, usually of colour, from low
socioeconomic backgrounds. Whether we see a change in the demographic profile of
domestic workers with the growth of housecleaning service companies remains
unclear. This paper therefore focuses on the recruitment strategies of employers of
selected housecleaning service companies in Johannesburg to shed some light on the
on the challenges that job seeking domestic workers may face. Open-ended interviews
with managers revealed that gender, race, age, long-term unemployment, technical
and personal skills of job seeking domestic workers have a strong impact in the
recruitment process, while immigration status plays a somewhat reduced role. This
paper concludes that housecleaning service companies have not changed the
demographic profile of domestic workers in South Africa yet, and that paid domestic
work is still predominantly a Black woman’s job.