As details emerge in the case of International Monetary Fund chief and alleged attacker Dominique Strauss-Kahn, my eye is on how his wrecked political clout is getting all the attention. The brutal assault of a hotel housekeeper that Manhattan District Attorney Artie McConnell described yesterday to a judge, who subsequently ordered that the IMF's managing director be held without bail at the Rikers Island jail complex? Not so much.
The IMF leader was (I think it's safe to use the past tense here because it's doubtful he'll re-emerge in politics, regardless of the outcome of this apparently damning case) a very likely French presidential candidate. In fact, he was widely seen as the Socialist Party's best hope for unseating French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Within hours of the story breaking, comments about a "Sarkozy setup" flooded the comments sections of online news reports, and soon emerged as their own articles.
As this story develops, it's all about Strauss-Kahn, instead of the woman (whose name is rightly protected) who accuses him of brutally attacking her. At her workplace. This woman, who was cleaning a $3,000-per-night hotel suite, is a human being. She deserves compassion as the global punditocracy conjectures about what's going happen to the IMF without that French "rockstar" at its helm.
My work focuses on the trafficking and exploitation of immigrant domestic workers, many of whom worked for Diplomats and employees of the World Bank and IMF. Of course, I'm reading the news coverage with interest. Over the past days, I have been watching how HER story is covered, in light of her occupation, ethnicity (reporters say that she's an African immigrant), and status as a crime victim. Usually, housekeepers are treated as silent, anonymous machines of the household, hotel, or office building, if they're noticed at all. But surely a vicious attack would shed light on the fact that this is a real person... right?
While I mostly work with household workers in private homes, the life of a hotel chambermaid is very similar. Being a housekeeper at a hotel (or anywhere else) doesn't exactly put you on equal footing with the wealthy and powerful when you are in "their" space. So when you're stuck in a bedroom (or private household) with them, what are your defenses?
Statistics about the frequency of sexual assault of hotel maids are difficult to find, but here's what I know about New York City's household workers, from a 2006 report by the Data Center and Domestic Workers United: "Thirty-three percent of workers experience verbal or physical abuse or have been made to feel uncomfortable by their employers. One-third of workers who face abuse identify race and immigration status as factors for their employers' actions." What we do know about the conditions of hotel housekeepers is that immigrants comprise the majority of that workforce, as do women of color, and that their workplace is dangerous on its own, let alone with the additional risk of sexual assault. Rushing to keep up with demand, hotel housekeepers have an injury rate 40 percent higher than workers in the overall service sector.
I have many other questions too. The two that come to mind immediately are:
1- Do Europeans and North Americans just assume that being subjected to sexual aggression is a given if you're a woman working as a maid in a wealthy man's home or hotel suite?
2- Why would anyone assume that a working-class woman would lie about a sexual assault to get money from a settlement?
I can't fathom why anyone would believe these things, but here we are in the comments section in Vanity Fair, the New York Times, and ABC News where every fourth word is "setup" and where the maid's getting very little empathy. I don't think the people writing these comments or news stories are malicious. It's just a symptom of the way household workers are treated in the United States and around the world. They are servants, and therefore -- for hotel guests and the people who can afford to have them clean their homes -- barely human.
Strauss-Kahn's lawyer Benjamin Brafman said that he represents "good people who have gone astray... that doesn't mean their lives should be destroyed." The themes of many of the reports and commentaries I have read center around the feeling that it would be a tragedy for this politician's career, and his removal would put the global economy at risk.
Because this "just" involves a hotel housekeeper, there's not a lot of conjecture about the tragedy she'll face as she tries to put her own life back together. Even if the reason that reporters aren't covering her story with humanity is that they want to respect our legal system's promise of "innocent until proven guilty," they're missing the broader point: this storyline isn't uncommon. No one is talking about the countless other household and hotel workers who have endured sexual harassment and assault at the hands of wealthy (or even middle-class) men around the world.
Why? Perhaps because it's supposed to be a fact of life that poor women's bodies are collateral damage of war, prizes for global accomplishment, or simply a means to an end. Women who are household workers or "servants" are even more vulnerable to dehumanizing sexual assault than others because their relationships are inherently unequal to their employers. We don't have scientific studies of the relative risks, but we have hundreds of testimonies of household workers who have been trafficked, exploited, and assaulted, and our common sense that tells us there are many more out there.
Of course it isn't uncommon that famous/wealthy men who assault women usually dominate the news. What will Strauss-Kahn do next? Even when their conduct is deemed improper without being illegal, there's a lot of hand-wringing over how prominent men such as former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, and former Sen. John Edwards, will suffer for their indiscretions.
Poor guys.
Cross-posted with IPS blog.
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Bessma Momani: Where Was the Fight for IMF Leadership?
Just because this individual appears to be an opportunist, hhowever, is no reason to think that ALL recent immigrants should be considered to be opportunists.
'Labor groups say many more [incidents of sexual abuse of female hotel staff] are hushed up because the victims are illegal immigrants or because hotels are wary of scaring off guests. Many hotels laid off security staff during the recession, leaving workers even more vulnerable, they said.
(...)
Anthony Roman, a consultant based on New York's Long Island who spent 30 years of working security for hotels, said he saw dozens of incidents involving female room attendants, from drunken propositions to rape.
"They're not an infrequent occurrence," he said.'
http://tinyurl.com/3cqpa7j
Having worked in low level jobs, I can also tell from personal experience that women in those positions are treated like dirt. Low status women are seen as fair game for men, the powerful and those not so much. Any male low-life sees himself as privileged and entitled to do as he pleases when faced with a low status woman. These women are on the lowest level in the pecking order. And most of them have learned throughout their lives not to cause any problems by expecting or, god forbid, demanding better treatment for themselves.
I believe the maid and I too have no pity for DSK. He's made his own bed, he'll get to sleep in it. Judging by the information coming out now (as well as our knowledge about sexual predators, especially those in power), he's abused multiple women and without any consequences so far.
This is a guy who was warned (allegedly by Sarkozy) to "behave" in America and avoid, among other things, getting into elevators with "interns." What kind of a person needs to be warned to act civilly toward women in what, after all, are public places? Ugh.
And there is also this new article from Reuters about diplomats/IMF/World Bank abuse:http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/18/strausskahn-diplomats-idUSN1820517120110518
These two combined was what I was hoping for when the news broke, better late than never! Ask and ye shall receive!
Thanks everyone, for reading
T. Williams
The elite-run media, in France especially, but also in the US, have already spent an inordinate amount of time bemoaning the poor DSK's terrible predicament. No surprise, I suppose, since, after all, he is one of their own. Bernard Henri Levy, DSK's BFF, wrote a full-blown apologia for his friend, putting down his victim in the process.
Others responded in a similar vein. HP's own Steve Clemons wrote a worshipful piece in defense of DSK, although, thankfully, he did not go as far as BHL in attacking the victim. And last night, Charlie Rose called this a "tragedy of Shakespearean proportions" -- by that he meant, of course, the DSK's situation. The old-boys-in-power club is stunned and deeply concerned by the fall of one of their own.
But the maid's life, ruined forever (and without the vast resources available to DSK to rely on as they both move on) has been only an afterthought in this debate -- either brought about by a belated pang of guilt, or to dissect her possible agenda.
What a world.
She did a good, responsible thing. I hope she feels vindicated by her courage - some more privileged women, victims of the same tyrant, were not as courageous. She is the mouse who belled the cat, while the others just squeaked to the other mice.
I hope justice will be done in this case.
Wanna know where this kind of thinking got the sisterhood movement...? Just comb the internet for all the lonley hearts clubs and for all the les ms's and hear them whine.
BTW, ever read the constitution about the rights of the accused and all the other laws that protect the victims of these he said/she said cases? I'll bet not. Get educated first, then write, save us the pain.
But what's MCP?
If the accusations stand, after some cushy jail time if at all he'll be back with his BFF and his hard-to-believe-she-is-French-stand-by-my-man wife and his mansions. As far as "...finished this guy's career ..." , he was the one who put it in play. Not to mention the livelihoods and lives the IMF has destroyed with their "austerity programs" for developing countries.
Meanwhile, the "alleged" victim, I think we could be "...sorry for her..." anyway. Even without the trauma and disruption this incident will bring, her life was probably close to the margins. People in that situation are fully aware of how close to being unemployed they are, fully aware of the downward slide that awaits them from the slightest perturbation, fully aware of their weak situation to not rock the boat, and know that if they should do so the chances of their being vindicated are next to nothing.
So we should in fact applaud this woman's choice not to remain silent, to go to the police to report a crime against her, perhaps thus protecting other women in the future.