Articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that were violated when I was an au pair Bonjour de Coeur Follow Mar 29, 2016 · Unlisted

I just happened to read The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and thought it would be interesting to write a post about how many of those rights have not been honored during my time in France. Here I decided to focus only on my time as an au pair in Le Vésinet.

Certain families, of a certain class, certain bigots amuse themselves by treating young foreign women like imbeciles. Les gens hautains, de classes privilégiées qui traitent des jeunes femmes étrangères de conne, les harcelent, les abusent, les exploitent, se croyant supérieurs, aussi qu’ils ont droit de le faire et que c’est normale.

I earned a B.A. at Lehigh University and I have studied French for almost 14 years. Furthermore, I became a passionnée of the arts as a student in Paris in 2008 and 2010. Yet, the family I worked for bullied me constantly, spoke down to me, and treated me like an idiot (in French traiter de conne), in my experience it is endemic to certain strata of French society to treat foreign women this way. It is precisely this “superior”attitude that prevents human rights from being respected.

Therefore, here is a list of all the human rights that were not respected when I worked as an au pair for a family in Le Vésinet.

Article 1.

Article 2.

Article 3. Certain liberties were denied me; my privacy and private life were not respected to the extent that I did not feel safe, and suffered serious aggression, intimidation tactics, and blackmail orchestrated by the family. All of these tactics are well documented in a history of subjugation based in colonial times, in which the wealthy would use terror to subordinate their imported help.

Article 4. I was an indentured servant for all intents and purposes, I had put the cost of the flight on a credit card and with my monthly 400 euro pocket money could certainly not afford rent anywhere else — a fact which was manipulated and exploited by the family.

Article 5. I was locked in the basement a few times, systematically criticized and bullied for hours on end several times over.

Article 7. My basic legal rights were NEVER recognized, because au pairs have the lowest social status in France, so therefore the families they work for have much more standing in all milieux in France, that is how French culture is set up and on top of it, they are on home base and legal language is a completely foreign language apart from French, so they are also using that to their advantage.

Article 8. The au pair contract the family created broke the law because it exceeded the daily and weekly hourly limits imposed by French law.

Article 9./10. I was denied the right to speak and the family simply lied in order to intimidate and terrorize me, I never had any way to defend myself in any sense, and have been living under the oppression of lies and the French “guilty until proven innocent” system.

Article 12. My private life was scrutinized, as was my sleep schedule, free time and I was kept on a very tight leash. The family created an entire hit job to silence me and I feel incredibly dishonored by their behavior.

Article 14. The mother in the family tried to force me to stay by lying to me and trying to convince me I would lose my visa if I left the family (just another ploy to lie and prendre le dessus, which is the modus operandi of these well to do French families).

Article 17. Clothes, different teas, a full container of laundry detergent were stolen.

Article 19. Open communication did not exist, the parents enforced a superior/inferior framework in which, when I wished to speak I was invalidated, denied my voice, and summarily silenced.

Article 20. There are no ways for au pairs to organize so that they may benefit from basic worker’s rights, as I was misogynistically informed by the DIRECCTE, “au pair is not work,” which is insulting because being an au pair is hard work! Cooking, cleaning, tutoring, driving, and so on are all “work” and if men did it they would be paid a fair hourly wage.

Article 22. I was denied my rights to assurance maladie (sécurité sociale) for almost an entire year, despite working more than the legal hourly limits when I was an au pair.

Article 23. See Article 20.

Article 24. I had zero paid vacation, which was cruel and unusual, because it meant, for instance, that I had to stretch 100 euros over three weeks including the entire Christmas break. I sent my entire family postcards as gifts, but it was still too expensive.

Article 25.1. As an au pair, I absolutely did not have “right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of h[herself] and of [her] family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.” Au contraire ! The mother in the family went so far as to instruct me thus: “I’m not growing anymore, so I don’t eat!”

Article 26. I made it clear I wished to take classes at university (I excelled and thrived when I was a student in Paris in 2008 and 2010, had no problem following classes all in French at the University of Paris, an adept of Parisian intellectualism) instead of going to “au pair language school,” but as usual was ignored and silenced.

Article 27. Despite being an aficionado of all arts, and having dedicated most of my life to learning about French culture and language, I was far too poor to participate in any of the activities I wished, whether cirque, singing lessons, going to the theater and so on, I simply could not afford them. This as the mother in the family told me I should shop at Petit Bateau, each of the kids had enough clothes for ten children, most of them designer, and received gifts like UGGs and drones, each had an iphone, but they did not even wish to pay me for the hours I worked over the weekly limit, and when they did, they started by paying me based on my pocket money, at a rate of about 3€ an hour, before I obsequiously explained that it didn’t really make sense to scale my pay based on my pocket money income, which already had room and board deducted, though I was pressured to buy my own food, and could not even afford that —it bears mentioning also, that when I did ask for a raise from the three euros an hour I was being paid in hourly wages for time worked over the legal hourly limits, the mother wished to pay me 7€ an hour, and that my request to be paid 8€ an hour, as I had for childcare in 2008 was met with stern contention. As a babysitter when I was in high school I made $12-$15 an hour doing considerably less work, in better working conditions where I was respected by adults and children alike. The family in Le Vésinet I worked for was home to roix enfants, children who are domineering and disrespectful and never punished by their parents. Given the bullying, condescension, and constant criticism I experienced, it was obvious to me that this behavior was a favorite family activity.

Article 28.

The bottom line is that worldwide the least desirable WORK (the work of women, because “work” has always been constructed as what men do outside of the home) goes unpaid, for those who do the work — as well as the work itself — are not respected.

Not only that, but those who take care of others, the nurturers, mothers, and teachers of the world’s population as a rule do not receive care, and are also expected to work for almost nothing, and in some cases are not compensated.

The paradox of the care sector (nannies, nurses, au pairs, sex workers and so on) is that those who give care are violently discriminated against in hospitals and by the health care complex at large. This was certainly true for me as an au pair: not only did I never gain access to my rights to la sécu, I paid all medical expenses out of pocket and it was made clear that the family did not care.

For reference, here is the document again: http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/