In 1985, Canadian poet and novelist Margaret Atwood published The Handmaid’s Tale, a dystopian novel set in the Republic of Gilead. A theocratic society where a militaristic band of religious extremists have seized control, the rule of Gilead subjugates women and strips them of their rights. Readers experience the events of the narrative through the eyes of Offred, a Handmaid whose sole purpose is to bear children for the ruling class. The regime uses religious beliefs to justify controlling women and exploits the Bible to enforce a rigid social hierarchy.

“I didn’t put in anything that we haven’t already done, we’re not already doing, we’re seriously trying to do, coupled with trends that are already in progress,” said Atwood when asked about the book’s inspiration years later. Defiant against polite consensus, she had caught a wave in the public mood. The novel has since been adapted several times, most recently as a television series starring Elisabeth Moss as Offred.

Atwood’s imagination fascinates us, in part, because it takes the real if subtle patterns of dehumanization in modern democracies—who gets consistently used up and unrecognized—and renders them in sharp dramas of power. We can no longer ignore our habits of thought and language, nor our secret cultural shames: Is our politics reducing women to mere vessels of procreation? Are domestic workers brute cogs in a system that keeps households running for their masters?

As I’ve read Atwood and watched her translation to the screen, it’s been hard to escape the echoes between Atwood’s Handmaids and the plight of the reproductive labour force in North America and beyond. I study stories of domestic workers to understand how their experiences can inform theological reflections about labour. Though the bulk of my research focuses on my homeland of Brazil, many of the stories I’ve encountered could also be told in other parts of the world.

In the United States, for example, there are approximately two million domestic workers, including cleaners, nannies, and caregivers. According to a recent survey from the National Alliance for Domestic Workers, 84 percent do not have a written agreement with their employer, 23 percent do not feel safe at work, and 76 percent receive no pay if their employer cancels on them after they show up for work.

Consider the story of Fainess, a domestic worker who, after enduring labour trafficking and severe exploitation by a Malawian diplomat to the US, managed to escape her trafficker’s home by squeezing through a gap beneath the garage door. “I lived in my trafficker’s home, but not as an equal. I lived like a slave,” she said in an interview with the American Civil Liberties Union in 2021. She had been raped by a friend of the trafficker’s family, with nowhere to turn, no English language skills, and no sense of how to report the assault. Eventually she found a way to recover her Malawian passport and run.

“The pain was too much,” Fainess says. “I was dying slowly, and I could not take it anymore.” She left and never looked back.

Melanie left the Philippines to seek better opportunities in the US and medical treatment for her son with cerebral palsy. An employment agency promised her a job in a chicken factory in the Pacific Northwest, for which she paid $5,000, along with the airfare. Upon arrival, however, the agency forced her to do housekeeping and child care on top of factory work. At the factory, she faced dangerous working conditions and constant fear of immigration raids. She had been promised independent housing but instead was made to stay in another employee’s home for the first three weeks.

Melanie was let go prematurely, leaving her in debt from agency fees. After paying another $500 to the agency, she secured a job as a housekeeper at a resort in Sedona, Arizona. While the living conditions were better, the workload took a toll on her health, and she couldn’t afford medical treatment. She eventually found a job as a caregiver in California and shared a place with a senior citizen who needed help paying rent. Although her job was finally stable, the landlord threatened to evict her because she was not on the lease. Melanie’s son passed away while she was in the US, and she couldn’t afford to visit him.

“Many times, I wished that I never came here, that I never had to go through what I did,” Melanie says limply now. “Had I known that what my traffickers had promised were lies, I would have stayed in the Philippines.”

The Economic Policy Institute has found that 90 percent of domestic workers in the United States are women. They tend to be older than other workers in the labour market, and over half of them belong to black, Hispanic, Asian American, and Pacific Islander communities. Their median wage is $13.79 per hour, in contrast to the $21.76 paid to non-domestic workers. They are three times more likely to live in poverty than other workers. Only one in ten domestic workers has access to an employer-provided retirement plan, and fewer than two in ten receive health-insurance coverage through their employment.

But there is a paradox. The same domestic workers so many of us would rather hide from our friends—the nannies, the yard workers, the house cleaners, the cooks—are those to whom we entrust that which is most precious to us: our homes, our food, and our loved ones. They are custodians of the domestic sphere: forming deep bonds with children and tending to the maintenance and beautification of the home. They are charged with stewarding an intimate knowing, walking a line between power and powerlessness.

This paradox is not new. The historical racialization of domestic work in the US is intricately tied to the nation’s broader racial and economic dynamics, marking a transition from an era when domestic labour could symbolize a stepping stone to upward mobility, to periods when it systematically entrenched racial hierarchies. The “who” of domestic work—and the shadows to which our cultural imagination too often condemns these individuals—has deep if subconscious ties to slavery and systemic racism. Initially rooted in violence by European colonizers who enslaved Indigenous, African, and poor white workers, domestic labour served as a lever for profit and power. After the abolition of slavery, the rise of Jim Crow segregation reinforced racial exclusion, forcing people of colour into low-wage domestic work. The westward expansion of the United States in the 1800s and early 1900s perpetuated racial violence in the borderlands, expanding the servant class to include various immigrant groups. Their ability to eventually leave domestic roles for better-paying industrial jobs highlighted a racialized path of mobility that was starkly denied to black Americans and other non-white groups.

For these communities, especially in the Jim Crow South, domestic work was not a ladder up but rather a ceiling of economic and social limitation. The domestic sphere became a site of racialized control, where black domestic workers navigated the precarious balance of intimate proximity and systemic subjugation within their employers’ homes. This period solidified the association of domestic work with racial and economic inferiority, an association that persisted even as the civil rights movement sought to dismantle segregationist barriers. The legacy of these dynamics is still evident today, as domestic work continues to be devalued and racialized, disproportionately affecting women of colour.

The historical socio-economic pressure on domestic workers has given birth to another paradox of power: change has come from unexpected places. The Great Migration in the 1910s and 1920s led to alliances and unions among domestic workers seeking to defend their rights. The civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s brought increased organizing among domestic workers, spurred by victories in racial segregation battles. Subsequent decades saw demographic shifts as African American women made way for Latin American, Caribbean, and Asian immigrant women due to changing immigration policies and civil rights gains. The founding of the National Domestic Workers Alliance in 2007 marked a pivotal moment, uniting over sixty domestic worker groups in a national movement led by women of colour. This multilingual, multi-ethnic movement connects struggles for racial justice with immigrant rights and labour rights, reflecting a global push for greater dignity and justice for domestic workers.

One of the latest initiatives by the National Domestic Workers Alliance is its effort to secure the adoption of the Domestic Workers’ Bills of Rights. This move seeks to ensure that current employment laws cover domestic workers and receive more robust safeguards. These bills aim to introduce standards such as minimum wage and overtime pay, protections against discrimination and harassment and other essential rights. Domestic workers have successfully passed these rights in ten states, two major cities, and the District of Columbia, marking a significant step forward in their advocacy efforts.

Watching these recent advances has taken me back to Atwood’s story, where control and resistance feed one another. In Gilead, the regime exercises an authority rendered absolute by a distorted interpretation of the biblical text. The Handmaids, ostensibly valued for their fertility, find themselves imprisoned and dehumanized, reduced to mere vessels of the state’s agenda. Still, a covert resistance among the Handmaids gradually emerges, giving birth to a different kind of power: one nurtured by a deep form of solidarity. Offred and the other Handmaids grapple with imputed powerlessness while subtly challenging the established order. Offred’s internal monologue becomes a narrative of resistance, asserting agency in the face of extreme subjugation. Power is fragmented and constantly shifting, with oppressive structures coexisting alongside persistent undercurrents of resistance.

Tales from the South

At around six million, Brazil has one of the world’s largest populations of domestic workers. Most of these workers are poor black women whose lives cannot be fully understood without attending to slavery’s legacy. Brazil received the highest number of enslaved Africans during the transatlantic slave trade cycle between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, and it was the last country to abolish slavery, in 1888. For nearly four hundred years, slavery shaped the marketplace and set the stage for today’s relations between different races, genders, and classes.

The research of Brazilian anthropologist Lélia Gonzalez (1935–1994) traced the impact of slavery on Brazilian society. Delving into the complex interplay of historical factors, including racial hierarchy, economic disparity, and the cultural resistance of Afro-Brazilians, Gonzalez questioned the notion that Brazil is a racial democracy, highlighting the significant influence of enslaved women, referred to as mucamas, within Brazilian homes. Their responsibilities extended beyond mere household tasks; they were often at the mercy of their owners’ sexual proclivities, making them targets not just of male lust but of their mistresses’ jealousy. According to Gonzalez, the ways in which these enslaved women were forced to inhabit their roles profoundly shaped Brazilian expectations of service and their perception of domestic labour today.

Gonzalez critiqued the feminist movement in Brazil for being too Eurocentric and not adequately addressing the unique challenges faced by black women, who suffer from discrimination not just on account of their gender but on account of their race and class too. For many black Brazilian women today, domestic work remains the only option, reinforcing stereotypes and economic instability. Sometimes this option is fatal.

On June 2, 2020, Mirtes Renata Santana de Souza was returning from walking her boss’s dog around the block when she saw her son, Miguel, a five-year-old boy, lying on the ground in front of her boss’s building. Miguel had fallen from the ninth floor. The adult responsible for Miguel’s care was Mirtes’s boss, Sarí Corte Real, the wife of the city mayor, who let him play by himself in the elevators of the building while she was getting her nails manicured. Miguel left the elevator on the ninth floor, found an open window, tried to climb it, and lost his balance. When his mother found him, he was still alive on the ground. She was able to take him to the hospital, but he died hours later.

The tragedy made global news, shocking the world not only for its absurdity but also because it prompted questions about its context. Mirtes was on city hall’s payroll but never worked as a public servant. She had to work during the Covid-19 pandemic even after the health authorities had declared domestic work non-essential. Miguel had to accompany his mother because his daycare had closed due to the virus. He died because nobody looked after him. Manicure is not an essential service. After being brought to the police station and charged with manslaughter, the first lady paid bail and was released.

Unfortunately, Mirtes’s lack of protection is not a Brazilian anomaly. One year before Miguel’s death, activist and former maid Joyce Fernandes published a book recording hundreds of first-person accounts of painful memories from former and current maids. The book is a selection of thousands of stories published on Fernandes’s Facebook page, beginning in 2016. The testimonies shine a light on the dark corners of the experience of domestic workers, making public some of the horrors they face daily. Fernandes decided to keep the accounts unedited for the book so her readers would have raw exposure to the workers’ voices. Most of the reports involve slander, non-observance of labour rights, offences against dignity, and moral and sexual harassment.

The book has sparked widespread discussions on social media and traditional media, raising public awareness about domestic workers’ conditions. By presenting unedited testimonies, Fernandes forces readers to confront uncomfortable truths about exploitation, abuse, and discrimination in private homes. The book has helped mobilize and strengthen those movements advocating for the rights of domestic workers, including a renewed discussion around the Constitutional Amendment 72 of 2013, known as PEC das Domésticas, which consolidated workers’ central rights: receiving a minimum wage, payment guaranteed by law, working hours of eight hours a day and forty-four hours a week, overtime pay. (For workers in commercial and industrial settings, such rights had been consolidated all the way back in 1943.) Unfortunately, however, today’s discussions come after a decade of economic crises and demographic changes that have shifted the domestic work landscape, with fewer full-time positions and a rise in informal work arrangements. Today, three-quarters of Brazil’s domestic workers are employed without formal contracts and lack labour and social security protections. Older women, black women, and single-mother domestic workers are increasingly unable to contribute to Social Security. The fight for justice continues.

An Ancient Tale

As a theologian, I find it tough to read these stories. For Christians, questions about God’s goodness, justice, and divine will are not easily answered when those beset by truly oppressive suffering don’t fit the hero’s journey of biblical characters like Moses, Daniel, and Joseph—characters so often valorized in Western treatments of God’s relationship to man.

When I first heard about Mirtes and Miguel, I thought of the millions of women in similar circumstances in Brazil and the United States. But then, as I mourned their tragedy after years spent studying the complex whole of the biblical narrative, Hagar’s story came to mind. In the book of Genesis we’re told that Hagar was an Egyptian servant who belonged to Sarai and was given to Abram as a concubine to bear his child. But after conceiving Ishmael, Hagar “looked with contempt on her mistress,” causing Sarai to treat Hagar harshly, keeping her in her place and making her life a misery. The gap in social status ensured Sarai had the upper hand in any dispute that might arise between the two. Like many of today’s domestic servants, Hagar did not accept Sarai’s abusive behaviour and fled to the desert.

But what follows in the biblical text is less recognizable to contemporary assumptions. God meets Hagar in the desert and tells her to return to Abram’s household—the first time in Scripture we see God encountering a woman. Instead of simply telling Hagar what to do, God makes her a promise: to multiply her offspring significantly, a promise curiously similar to the one given to Abram years earlier. Hagar returns to her masters, and years later, Sarai (now called Sarah) conceives and gives birth to Isaac. Realizing that Ishmael might threaten Isaac’s inheritance, Sarah demands that Abram (now called Abraham) evict Hagar and her son. Encouraged by God’s favourable words toward Hagar and the boy, Abraham sends them to the desert. They wander, and when the supplies run out, the only option for Hagar is to put her son under some bushes and leave him there to die. But God intervenes again, saves them, and fulfills his promise from years prior.

It’s an unusual series of events that invites the reader to ponder the relationship between God and the oppressed. Survival, here, is a testament to God’s faithfulness, and offers a spiritual guide for women navigating the legacy of historical oppression. Hagar found herself alone in the desert. Our contemporary Hagars are seeing and finding God in each other.

Too much of the “theology of work” conversation centres on those with the agency of an Abram and Sarai and ignores the importance of those who work to keep life for all of us going. It is not enough to pontificate that “our work matters to God” if we’re not helping to build systems that promote dignity to all the people who are part of those systems.  If our societies are to avoid a dystopian tale, Christians must do the hard, intricate, not-always-popular work of interrogating how our faith intersects with the financial, political, and social systems that promote dignity to some and not to others. Contemporary theologians like Delores S. Williams, Emilie M. Townes, and Kelly Brown Douglas—just to name a few—are charting new paths in this regard, offering a more nuanced understanding of biblical texts in light of the lived experiences of marginalized communities past and present. Theirs is an honest approach seeking to ensure that modern theology reflects the diverse realities of all people, making theology more relevant to the day’s discourse and reinvigorating its contribution to the public square.

In a recent op-ed for the Washington Post, Marilynne Robinson wrote, “In the narrative of Genesis, Hagar has more in common with Abraham by far than does anyone else. This should be a factor in considering how those who are ‘chosen’ are singular and how they are not.” Hers is a holy challenge. Do we understand God’s work only through our own social location? Or might it be possible to look out, reach out, and experience the largesse of God in solidarity with those whose work and lives shape the reality we share?