Page 84 - Chinese Woman Living and Working

THE MAID IN CHINA 71
Women’s Federation set up the ‘March 8th’ Domestic Service Centre (sanba jiazheng fuwu
gongsi) in Chaoyang District, which became the first baomu introduction agency in the city,
if not in the country The establishment of the centre was considered to be the first step
towards the regulation of the baomu market. By 1986, the China Women’s Federation
publicised the successful experiment with the March 8th Introduction services, and within
a short period of time, each of the eight districts in Beijing had set up their own District March
8th Domestic Service Centre. From 1996, baomu from as many as 130 counties in
eighteen provinces have been recruited through this official channel, supplying as many as
900,000 households in Beijing with domestic services, recruiting about 70 per cent of the
baomu currently working in Beijing. Since the mid-1980s, domestic service introduction
agencies have also proliferated at the level of neighbourhood committees in the city,
under the supervision and directorship of the Women’s Federation (Liu 1998).
In the hope of regulating supply and demand of the baomu market, the Beijing’s
Women’s Federation works closely with more than ten provinces, carrying out
negotiations with local governments, local women’s federations, and departments of
labour and employment. Recruitment processes have also become more or less
standardised, with prospective baomu needing to pass literacy tests and physical check-ups.
Upon arriving in Beijing, recruited baomu will need to go through interviews before
signing the employment contract, enrolling in training courses, and familiarising
themselves with the official document, Handbook for Domestic Service Workers (jiazheng fuwu
yuan shouce). Once registered, the baomu will become a ‘domestic worker’ (jiazheng fuwu
yuan). In 1997, the China Ministry of Labour announced that ‘domestic work’ is an
officially recognised profession (Liu 1998). Compared with other rural migrants trying to
make a living in the city by working in the construction industry, in factories, small
businesses or in prostitution, the baomu migrant group has received more support and
assistance from the state and the government.
The involvement of the Women’s Federation in the baomu market takes the form of
collaboration between its headquarters in the city and its county-level branches in the
sending zone. Very often, individual maids play a significant role in initiating the link
between the Women’s Federation at the sending and receiving zones. Jiao Xiumei, a
young woman from a village in Quanyang County in central Anhui came back from
Beijing after a few years’ experience as a domestic worker. Delegated by the Women’s
Federation in Beijing, Jiao went back home to establish a recruiting and training centre,
supplying as many as 1,000 maids to Beijing from1993 to 1994. Jiao made a handsome
amount of money from this enterprise, and she also became a media celebrity upon
receiving the title of one of the ‘ten rural entrepreneurs of the year’ in 1994 (Qiao 1996).

The baomu and modernity

The replacement of ‘baomu’ by ‘domestic worker’ in the official idiom was intended to
replace the connotation of inequality based on a master-servant relationship, with one of
equality marked by a customer-client relationship. It also reflects the diversification of
domestic service rendered by these women nowadays, ranging from baby-sitting,
shopping, cooking, cleaning, caring for the old and the sick to house-minding. However,