Domestic workers, a godsend for Hong Kong women

If you go the Central (district) or Causeway Bay area of Hong Kong on weekends and public holidays, you will find masses of female (and some male) domestic workers gathering in parks, on designated pedestrian walkways, in the courtyards of huge commercial complexes and along the walkways of overhead pedestrian bridges. It is quite an amazing sight, and it forces you to realize the magnitude of Hong Kong’s foreign domestic workforce.

People grumble about all these spaces being occupied by immigrant workers because they, themselves, can no longer use them. Those who grumble have probably forgotten one very important fact: These domestic workers have freed the women of Hong Kong from the burden of being the main caregiver in their household.

The majority of domestic workers in Hong Kong are Filipinos, with an increasing proportion coming from Indonesia. Those from Indonesia are becoming more popular, as many of them can speak Cantonese, the local dialect, while those from the Philippines speak only English. A small proportion of the workers come from Thailand. While writing this , I learned from Wikipedia that foreign domestic workers make up approximately 3 percent of the local population. There were 284,901 of them in 2010.

We have been hiring domestic workers since the late 1970s. As I recall, they were initially hired to take care of babies and children in a family. In more recent years, many of them are being hired to look after seniors. Historically, women have been the main caregivers in society, and this is still the case. Women are expected to provide care to those in need within a family. For better or worse, domestic workers have set us free. For many, to support a family, both husband and wife need to work. Given the disappearance of large, extended families, the woman of the family often needs help if she is to work outside the home.

After having babies, Hong Kong women go back to work more frequently than women in Western countries. It is rather uncommon for local women to give up careers to stay home and raise their kids. The advantage may be more secure income for the family. The down side is that working parents sometimes over-compensate for lack of time spent with their children by spoiling them. Some of my friends and acquaintances may be highly educated, but they indulge their children just the same. To mitigate the guilty feelings they have for not spending enough time with their kids, they buy expensive toys and gifts, or allow poor choices of foods and games.

There may be many problems associated with having a domestic worker to help us run a home, but I still think that it is great for women in Hong Kong to have this option. A Hong Kong woman can live her life the way she wants. She can raise her kids at home but, if she chooses to have a career, she can hire a domestic worker.

Back to where I started—I think we shouldn’t grumble. We should be appreciative of foreign domester workers’ contribution to Hong Kong.

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International.