Bahrain Tribune :Reasons why employers beat maids?

Reasons why employers beat maids?
Psychological and other factors behind the trend
Ayla Marisse G Ginete
Contributor

Stories of the struggle of housemaids in the Middle East are de rigeur in the local pages of newspapers in the region.
Maids of various nationalities experience abuse of one form or the other; Indians, Sri Lankans, Filipinos, Sudanese and Ethiopians. The number of abused maids may be increasing but resolved cases of abuse remains minimal even today.
The Tribune digs deeper into this issue with an attempt to identify the psychology of humans that make them turn violent against servants.
There are people who appear calm suddenly lose control of themselves even when the servant commits a minor mistake such as purchasing the wrong brand of bread.
Psychologist Dr Banna Buzaboon says: “Obviously, circumstances will differ in each case of this kind of abuse, depending on the personality and stressors or the employer and employee.”
“The risk of violence and/or verbal abuse on the part of the employer will be increased by factors known generally to be associated with violence e.g. a past history of violence, personality disorder, a mood disorder (e.g. bipolar disorder), substance abuse, and a history of childhood abuse etc.”
“In addition – and perhaps more relevant to your question – there may be social class effects operating in such cases of maid abuse.”
“Some evidence shows that lower socioeconomic class and disparities in social class may be associated with increased risk of victimisation and increased rates of psychological distress,” she said.
“We also know that inequality of power is sometimes associated with violence, e.g. marriages with male-dominant or female-dominant patterns have higher rates of violence than more egalitarian marriages,” she adds.
While the reasons for the abuse are multiple and complex, one critical explanation is the lack of legal protections, in the form of local labour laws and bilateral agreements, to ensure worker safety and adequate wages. Even where such legal mechanisms do exist, in the form of memoranda of understanding, contracts, civil and criminal laws, and international compacts, they are often not enforced.
Because maids and nannies work inside people’s homes, the state is hesitant to intervene to regulate conditions or resolve disputes. Although domestic migrant workers are technically protected under criminal law there have been very few cases where hiring agents or employers were prosecuted for abuse.
In the end, most victims just want the abuse to stop. They have little faith in the system and simply hold out hope that their wages will eventually be paid.
According to Celia, who worked as a maid for 12 years, “Maids would be afraid to go to the police with a complaint because they know that the employer would just say that they stole money or something like that. The courts would always believe the employer’s word. Maids would just be afraid they would end up in prison.”
Lack of enforcement is also due to the low status of female migrant workers in the Middle East. Because they are poor and often uneducated, they are viewed as undeserving of legal protection.
As an OWWA official states: “Such positions have come to be seen by Arab women as degrading and unacceptable. Since the influx of foreign women from Africa and Asia, the position of domestic maid has become one that carries with it a particularly low status. This is not only because of the servile nature of the tasks, the conditions of work and relatively low wages, but also because there is now a racial and discriminatory stigma attached to domestic employment.”

Article from: Bahrain Tribune Newspaper- www.BahrainTribune.com

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