General Context
With almost no exception, Las Kellys are women and they usually are also a main actor in their household economy, if not the only one. So, to really assess the disadvantaged situation of las Kellys, we will extend further in the overall Spanish women situation and recent decades progress.
In the 1950-1960s, inner migrants from Spanish rural areas were hired by middle class families to perform many of the caring tasks assigned to their members, as well as other domestic functions (Lyberaki, 2008). Among them, the Spanish women who migrate abroad in this period to work as maids broke with the existing stereotype of the passive migrant woman dependent on a pioneering husband (Oso Casas, 2008). These rural girls were Las Kellys historical precedent, but, unlike today, cleaning didn’t drive significantly females to the workforce and soon it got outdated (Lyberaki, 2008). Although it happened without moving a bit the care tasks out from the women shoulders (Lyberaki, 2008). But, although there were many unfair situations, the quality of life and equality of opportunities for women in Spain for the period 1970-2020 was positive even if compared with traditionally more developed countries (Guisan & Aguayo, 2020). On this matter, Spain has signed / joined to (Leoncini, 2020):
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the Convention of the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW, 1979)
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the Platform of Beijing (1995)
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the Istanbul Convention (2011)
As well as other supranational legal documents backing Gender Equality up.
Western Europe has been following a family-centred model of care where it was squarely their own responsibility, although it has been changing gradually (Lyberaki, 2008). On the other hand, SHARE survey highlights that, even if transfer of time of older people to mind for their grandchildren is a widespread phenomenon everywhere in Europe, the intensity of care provided for grandchildren (very likely by grandmothers) in 2008 was much higher in Spain, Italy and Greece compared both to Continental and the Nordic countries (Lyberaki, 2008).
Therefore, the gender gap in social visibility still remains and in 2015 the European women carried out 75% of household chores as well as 66% of childcare and, in addition to this, they “were more likely to work part-time and earn less” (Guisan & Aguayo, 2020);(Leoncini, 2020). On the other hand, even if Italy, Spain and Portugal share a family-driven welfare model, the stereotype of women as homemakers in Spain halves the Italian and Portuguese’s share (Leoncini, 2020). But, in spite of this, the economic participation and opportunity of women in Spain is somewhat mediocre and plummets down a set of outstanding figures in the Global Gender Gap report 2020 (Crotti et al., 2020).