There are more than 2 million domestic workers in the United States – the nannies who take care of our children, the housecleaners who bring order to our homes, and the home care workers who ensure older adults and disabled people can live with dignity and agency as they receive care in their homes.
Domestic workers do the work that makes all other work possible and yet, they are often the least valued in our society. At the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA), we believe telling authentic and complex stories about historically underrepresented communities has never been more important, and domestic workers sit at the intersection of the most pressing social issues of our time – from immigration, to labor rights, to gender and racial justice.
In order to achieve this, NDWA works alongside the entertainment industry to debunk stereotypes, flag problematic narratives, and bring light to the breadth of untapped story potential in the domestic worker movement.
But what are those stories?
Over the course of a year, NDWA set out to create a first of its kind “story roadmap” dedicated to domestic worker representation, developed straight from the experiences, hopes, and visions of domestic workers. Our goal was to develop a set of resources specifically designed for entertainment creatives and storytellers, including tools like character archetypes and tips on building engaging plots, in order to support writers in telling bold, new, and authentic stories.
We developed the Roadmap in three phases:
Media Research: We began by conducting media research with four objectives: to inform our understanding of existing representation and ideas about domestic workers, to surface resources from domestic worker history that might inform and inspire creatives, to explore analogous resources developed to support creatives around representation/storytelling in other areas, and to understand what types of storytelling supports change.
Listening to the experts: The bulk of this project consisted of hearing directly from domestic workers. We sought NDWA members' expertise about their experiences as domestic workers, their insights related to representation, and their ideas about storytelling. We conducted interviews and focus groups with over 30 domestic workers, with an eye towards gathering perspectives that represent the diversity of the community: Black and brown women, immigrants, members from the coasts, the south, midwest and southwest, and women who work across all three sectors of domestic work: home care workers, nannies and housecleaners. We asked participants to share with us how they are perceived in their day to day and represented in pop culture, how they see themselves and how they would like to be seen, and what a world that values their labor looks like.
We began by asking participants to reflect on how they are represented and would like to be represented, what types of stories they would like to see on screen, what aspects of their work they find challenging, and which aspects they enjoy. We asked questions such as:
However, we wanted to dig deeper, to create tools with new and unexpected entry points into domestic worker storytelling. We challenged our participants to think about representation in a creative, expansive way, by asking questions such as:
Conversations with strategists: Lastly, we wanted to ensure that the resources and tools we were creating would actually be useful and inspiring to screenwriters and other creative storytellers. We talked to culture change strategists, screenwriters, and cultural consultants who focus on representation of marginalized communities in film/TV to learn about their practices and approaches, gaps in support/resources, and what kind of tools would be most helpful to their work.
We set out to create a resource that would speak directly to storytellers while still maintaining the voices and truths of domestic workers. To capture the magic that happens in the room when a domestic worker shares their story with someone new to the movement – the lightbulb moment of understanding, the rush of compassion as they relate care work to their own lives, and the excitement of realizing the rich and unique stories that can be told about this community.
After a year of research, focus groups, and interviews, we believe we achieved that. We created a first of its kind comprehensive storytelling roadmap dedicated specifically to telling authentic domestic worker stories that captures the full spectrum of the domestic worker experience and history.
The Roadmap, which exists as both a website and a PDF handbook, debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2024 during a panel at the Impact Lounge and stayed available at the lounge all weekend for 2200+ attendees.
Since then, we have utilized the Roadmap in story consultations with screenwriters, conversations with production companies, and to advise social impact campaigns. We’ve seen an uptick in inquiries from creatives wanting to tell a new story or ensure that their story is authentic and beneficial to the community.
We believe this is just the beginning – this Roadmap can be adapted to reach industries beyond entertainment, such as journalism and education, to ensure domestic worker’s voices are heard in every facet of our culture.
