Care Work and Class

Merike Blofield is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Miami. Her edited volume The Great Gap: Inequality and the Politics of Redistribution in Latin America was published by Penn State University Press in 2011.

• ContentsList of TablesPreface and AcknowledgmentsList of AcronymsIntroduction1 Domestic Workers in Latin America Toda2 Overcoming Elite Resistance3 Working in Chronic Informality4 Bolivia and Costa Rica: Social Mobilization and Reform from the Bottom Up5 Uruguay and Chile: Basic Universalism Versus Top-Down IncrementalismConclusion NotesReferencesIndex

“As Blofield incisively chronicles, until recently, household servants and nannies, who compose 15 percent of the economically active female population in Latin America, were systematically denied basic labor protections. But in country after country, their advocates have improved their lot by making good use of democratic processes.”—Richard Feinberg Foreign Affairs