Anand Mathai

This op-ed was first published on our sister site Coconuts Jakarta All of us — governments, employers, the media and each of us, as individuals — need to stop using the words maid and helper (and equivalent terms such as pembantu in Indonesian or katulong in Tagalog) to refer to domestic workers. What is so wrong with those words? Is there something shameful about being a maid or a helper? Absolutely not.

All of us — governments, employers, the media and each of us, as individuals — need to stop using the words maid and helper (and equivalent terms such as pembantu in Indonesian or katulong in Tagalog) to refer to domestic workers. What is so wrong with those words? Is there something shameful about being a maid or a helper? Absolutely not. Domestic workers are easily among the hardest working and most self-sacrificing members of our societies.