MEXICO CITY — At age 12, Raquel Guadarrama left the home of her poor, widowed mother to clean the houses of middle- and upper-class Mexican families.
For 34 years, she scrubbed floors, washed dishes, hung laundry and baby-sat toddlers -- all the while cowering as employers called her stupid and sexually harassed her.
When she was 14, Guadarrama was forced to fend off the advances of her 70-year-old employer, who exposed himself when his wife wasn't looking and offered her expensive jewelry in exchange for sex.
"Many times, I had to leave my jobs because of the sexual harassment," Guadarrama said. "I always had to eat after my employers did, on separate plates, as if I were their pet. In fact, I think pets have more privileges."
Guadarrama, now 55, has little more than a bruised ego and tired bones to show for her more than three decades of backbreaking labor. She has no pension plan, no social security, no health insurance.
That's because Mexico remains in the dark ages when it comes to the treatment of domestic workers -- despite repeated efforts by activists to reform antiquated labor laws and President Vicente Fox's recent promises to improve conditions for female workers.
"Nothing has changed," said Rosa Palma, 31, a women's activist. "My mother spent 50 years of her life in domestic work and when it came time for me to do it as well, I suffered the same discrimination, the same exploitation.
"You'd think that things would be different in the 21st century, but they aren't."
Like Guadarrama, Palma spent much of her eight years as a maid swatting away the straying hands of male employers and dodging the insults of her female bosses.
"I used to be ashamed to say that I did this work because it is so under-appreciated," she said.
And yet many Mexicans don't know how to live without their maid. Take a look inside nearly any middle- or upper-class household -- and even occasionally a lower-class one -- and you will find a domestic worker.
The full-time, live-in maids -- many of them in their lower teens despite Mexico's minimum employment age of 16 -- generally abandon poor, rural, Indian communities to work in city homes.
"They are working practically in slavery," said Julia Chavez Carapia, coordinator of the women's studies program at Mexico's National Autonomous University. "They have to be on top of everything, from early in the morning until nighttime, and they are totally dependent on the families they work for. Sexual harassment and abuse is very common."
