Experiences and everyday form of resistance of women working in paid domestic service: Tactics and strategies

Daily life, which is defined as natural, everyday and ordinary, contains practices in which gender-based inequalities are reproduced and experienced. These practices become more visible in the domestic sphere and determine the norm of femininity and differentiate gender roles. Therefore, while women's domestic labour, which is identified with the private sphere, is rendered invisible, their paid domestic labour is devalued compared to other forms of labour. Women reconstruct their subjectivity by experiencing differentiated gender roles and relations of domination both in their own unpaid domestic labour and in their paid domestic services. From this point of view, this study aims to problematise the fragility created by the myth of 'home' by focusing on the practices of establishing, maintaining and protecting the daily routine of women working in paid domestic service. The main aim of the study is to investigate the 'strategies' and forms of 'micro-resistance' to cope with the power and power relations created by this vulnerability. Resistance is basically a form of struggle that people give in order to survive against the difficulties, oppression and injustices they experience in power relations that they constantly encounter in their daily lives. Within the scope of the purpose of the study, in-depth interviews were conducted with 20 women who were selected by purposeful sampling method and who provide paid domestic service living in Ortaca district of Muğla. The interviews were categorised, discussed and interpreted in line with certain themes and sub-codes.