As the editors write in the introduction of this book, the left “came into power with the promise of deepening and widening citizenship regimes”. The rights of paid domestic workers, that is, nannies and maids, is a particularly good case for examining whether the left has performed with regard to this promise, throughout society. Paid domestic workers suffer from multiple disadvantages as an occupational group: at about 15 percent of the urban female labor force in Latin America, they are overwhelmingly female, tend to be members of racial and ethnic minorities, and earn on average very low wages.
