Blog Series: The 1980s Struggle for Domestic Workers’ Rights - Part 4

Prior to 1981, Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Programs allowed immigrant domestic workers to stay in Canada for a limited period, provided that they retain their employment as domestics. This policy was heavily criticized by organizations such as INTERCEDE, the Committee Against the Deportation of Immigrant Women (CADIW), the Ad Hoc Committee of Filipino Domestic Workers for Landed Status, and other immigrant rights associations which included domestic workers, anti-imperialist activists, and labour advocates. These groups argued that the government’s Temporary Foreign Worker Programs were deeply exploitative, and often meant that immigrant women had to endure human rights abuses from employers if they wished to stay in Canada. Arriving primarily from The Caribbean and The Philippines, both of which experienced acute economic crises due to decades of European colonial rule followed by imperialist interference from the U.S. and Canada, these women were highly motivated to stay in Canada to provide financial support for their children and their families back home.¹

Organizing these workers was challenging, however, due to the isolated nature of domestic work, lack of information surrounding Canadian labour laws, and threats of deportation or reprisal from employers. In this context, women’s popular theatre became a crucial means for training, education, and development of international solidarity surrounding “women’s work.” The following will focus on two community theatre groups who not only developed plays about domestic work, but also ran participatory drama workshops with domestic workers and community organizations in Canada. These groups are The Sistren Theatre Collective, who twice travelled to Ontario from Kingston, Jamaica to perform and lead political workshops, and the Carlos Bulosan Cultural Workshop developed by Filipina activists from the Coalition Against the Marcos Dictatorship (CAMD) in Toronto. Both collectives used theatre as a means for social change by dramatizing the effects of economic restructuring on women and by educating the public on popular histories developed by, for, and about working-class women. According to INTERCEDE’s Martha Ocampo, theatre workshops “really developed people’s confidence,” and transformed women who were “so afraid of talking out in the public” into “really good actors.”²  By participating, women learned how to advocate publicly for themselves and for others. 
 

The Sistren Theatre Collective was founded in 1977 by a group of thirteen women living in Kingston, Jamaica, most of whom were working-class single mothers. The collective grew out of a Jamaican “make-work” program called Impact, which “provided some training in a variety of fields including music, drama, and arts and crafts.”³  These “Impact workers” – mostly poor, unemployed women – were later hired in low-paying jobs such as street cleaning and school support work. At the end of the program, they produced a short dramatic skit about their experiences, and the group decided to continue meeting and developing their theatre skills. They approached Honor-Ford Smith, an instructor at the Jamaican School of Drama, who agreed to work as their artistic director; and thus, Sistren was formed.⁴

The following extract from the “Sistren Manifesto” provides an outline of the Theatre Collective’s theories, methods, and objectives in the early 1980s:

1. Sistren uses our personal lives as a crucial starting point for examining the oppression of women.
2. Sistren brings the struggle against oppression down to a day-to-day level so that the average woman/ person can relate to it.
3. Sistren takes the ideas to working-class communities – the vanguard of the struggle, even when they are behind bars or in isolation. 
4. Sistren shows that by breaking down our isolation and working together, individual problems can be solved through collective action.
5. Through Drama Workshops, Sistren helps other groups with short term problems and provides a possible basis for long-term problem solving.
6. Sistren works at consciousness-raising and making people aware of agencies and alternatives open to them in their day-to-day struggles.
7. Sistren presents the general exploitation and oppression in society examining them specifically from a woman’s point of view, while realizing that no issue is exclusively a feminist issue.
8. Sistren draws strength from our proud history of struggle and resistance against oppression.
9. Sistren collaborates with other organizations of both sexes in carrying out our aims.
10. Sistren uses links with all sections of society and makes use of public resources to further our goals.
11. Sistren seeks to be economically viable to guarantee its autonomy and survival.⁵
     

These last three points were primary motivators for Sistren’s first visit to Canada in 1981, where they sought to advertise their collective, to connect with Canadian community groups, and to understand the struggles facing Jamaican domestic workers overseas. “The main distinguishing feature of Sistren,” according to their manifesto, “is that it makes the domestic and ‘private’ areas of women’s lives a matter of political concern, showing that we cannot fully understand the meaning of female oppression unless we examine that area.” This overarching goal was especially relevant for immigrant domestic workers in Canada because this labour was relegated to the private sphere and therefore positioned outside the scope of Canadian labour laws. In January 1981, labour minister Robert Elgie argued that setting a limit on hours worked was a “very difficult problem... because keeping timesheets and that extra bookwork would be just too much for some employers to handle.”⁶

Using theatre as a means of dynamic popular education, Sistren’s dramaturgy emphasized discussion, improvisation, and audience participation as a means of consciousness-raising and community organizing. During Sistren performances, audiences were invited “to take sides in disputes, to offer their opinions, to think and to analyze.”⁷  For their 1981 tour of Ontario, coordinated in part by the International Council for Adult Education (ICAE) and Cuso International, Sistren performed their shows QPH (1981) and Domestick (1981) in Toronto and Ottawa. Prior to their tour, Sistren had developed these performances to “focus on domestic workers” as “women who care for others, but in turn aren’t cared for by the society.”⁸
 

The first play, QPH, was based on a real fire that broke out in the overcrowded women’s ward of the Kingston Alm’s House on the night of May 20, 1980, and killed 167 destitute women. The show, according to the playbill, was named for Queenie, Pearlie, and Hopie, “three women who spent some of their strongest years in domestic labour. By chance they met, lived, and two of them died at the Alms House. Women who struggled bravely in an uncaring, unjust society.” Sistren dedicated this play to “all the women who have struggled and are still struggling for survival against all odds.” Similarly, Domestick was conceived as “a tribute to women’s work” which is “universally badly paid, low status work.” According to Sistren, Domestick was developed through conversations with Jamaican domestic workers, and attempts to answer questions like: “Why is domestic work so undervalued?”; “Who benefits most from childcare and housekeeping?”; and “How does women’s position in the home affect other problems of women?”⁹

In the playbill, Sistren informed audiences of their participatory strategy, stating that “we hope you’ll join us in telling us of your experience in this area and in trying to find answers to these questions.” Sistren also connected their staging of Domestick to wider economic issues that affected women around the world: “without women’s work none of us could continue yet women are the world’s poorest. Women’s work repairs, services and reproduces – yet it is unrecognized. Meanwhile, spending on arms increases and the neutron bomb is stockpiled in the U.S.A.”¹⁰  During their workshops with Canadian community groups and immigrant domestic workers, Sistren helped women translate these problems into forms of cultural expression; in one workshop, participants were asked to create sculptures that “express an aspect of Imperialism, paying special attention to how women are affected.” In another, actresses from Sistren presented a scene from Domestick, followed by discussion of the “problem raised by the scene.” Participants were then invited to pose possible solutions through their own staged performances, and they were encouraged to “explore the theme of domestic work as an issue for Third World women.”¹¹ 
 

In 1982, the Filipino community in Toronto developed their own theatre collective called The Carlos Bulosan Cultural Workshop (CBCW). This workshop was driven by producer Martha Ocampo (INTERCEDE board of directors) and writer/director Fely Villasin-Cusipag (coordinator of the Coalition Against the Marcos Dictatorship (CAMD), Toronto Chapter), and it was originally conceived as the cultural arm of the CAMD in Toronto¹².  Based on a longstanding tradition of popular theatre in the Philippines, the CBCW “used dramatic works to highlight a range of issues facing Filipinos in Canada, from the exploitation of domestic workers to employment discrimination, gender-based violence to neo-colonial and neo-liberal economic regimes.”¹³  In 1989, after years of training their members in the art of community theater, the CBCW developed their second major production If My Mother Could See Me Now/Inay Kung Alam Mo Lang presented in English and Tagalog. This play was developed and preformed entirely by domestic workers and demonstrated that Canada “is not the land flowing with milk and honey” but, rather, a place of “tears caused by isolation, fatigue, wounded self-esteem… [and] constant fear of deportation.”¹⁴  

In addition to publicizing racist and sexist incidents experienced by Filipino domestic workers, the play also showed how Filipino domestic workers in Canada had courageously taken a stand against the institutions and policies that continued to exploit them. Moreover, as an arm of the CAMD, the CBCW’s performances helped politicize the Filipino community in Canada. The CBCW’s cultural legacy remains evident today through anti-imperialist Filipino youth groups such as Anakbayan Canada, Bayan Canada, and Migrante Canada, all of whom participated in the National Mobilization Against the Arms Trade which recently took place in front of Parliament on May 30th, 2024. While the CAMD and CBCW focused on opposing the US-Marcos dictatorship, landed status for domestic workers, and halting the arms trade, these new groups have been tirelessly organizing against the new US-Marcos II regime, the unjust deportation of immigrant workers, and the manufacture of U.S.-Canadian weapons fueling what International Human Rights experts are calling an ongoing genocide in occupied Palestine As such, these newer organizations follow in the footsteps of CAMD, CBCW, and the Sistren Theatre Collective by publicizing invisible connections between imperialist violence, economic interference, and the exploitation of Third World women’s labour.

This year, the Women’s Archives at the University of Ottawa Library wishes to celebrate immigrant women and their contribution to obtaining human rights in Canada. This is the final installment in a series of blog posts on the 1980s struggle for domestic workers rights, leading up to the celebration of International Domestic Workers’ Day on June 16th, 2024. Visit migrantrights.ca to read more about the ongoing struggle for migrant workers’ rights and demand #StatusforAll.

Notes

1. The following sources provide further information about U.S. / Canadian imperialism and its relationship to economic crises in Asia, Latin America, and The Caribbean:
   • “American Imperialism in the Philippines,” Peek in the Stacks, CSUN University Library, https://library.csun.edu/SCA/Peek-in-the-Stacks/us-imperialism-philippines
   • “How Empires Gutted the Philippines,” A History of Domestic Work and Workers Organizing, National Domestic Workers Alliance, How Empires Gutted the Philippines - A History of Domestic Work and Worker Organizing (dwherstories.com)
   • “The Period of U.S. Influence,” The Philippines, Encyclopedia Brittanica, https://www.britannica.com/place/Philippines/The-period-of-U-S-influence
   • Tamanisha J. John, Canadian Banks and Imperialism in the English-Speaking Caribbean (2021) Florida International University Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 4804. https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/4804
   • Tamanisha J. John, “Canadian Financial Imperialism and Structural Adjustment in the Caribbean,” Class, Race and Corporate Power, vol. 9, no. 2, 2021,  https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/classracecorporatepower/vol9/iss2/1
   • Tyson Reeder, “Caribbean-US Relations,” American History (25 June 2019) https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.727
2. Franca Iacovetta, interviewer. “Filipina Activists/Organizing Domestic Workers: Intercede.” Oral history interview with Martha Ocampo, Cenen Bagon, Anita Fortuno, and Genie Policarpio. RiseUp! Feminist Digital Archive, https://riseupfeministarchive.ca/collection-women-unite/filipina-activists-organizing-domestic-workers-intercede/
3. Jean Christie, Letter and Proposal for Sistren Tour in Toronto (16 October 1980), Archives and Special Collections, University of Ottawa, 10-094-S2-SS3-F11
4. Ibid.
5. Sistren Theatre Collective, “Extract from our Manifesto” (20 August 1981) Archives and Special Collections, University of Ottawa, 10-094-S2-SS3-F14
6. Louise Brown, “Domestics clean up workplace,” The Toronto Star (22 January 1981), Archives and Special Collections, University of Ottawa Library, 10-094-S2-SS3-F14
7. Sistren Popular Theatre (flyer), Archives and Special Collections, University of Ottawa Library, 10-022-S2-SS1-F1
    
8. Sistren Theatre Collective, Playbill for Domestick and QPH (c. 1981), Archives and Special Collections, University of Ottawa, 10-094-S2-SS3-F11
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Sistren Theatre Collective, “Workshop Program” (20 August 1981) Archives and Special Collections, University of Ottawa, 10-094-S2-SS3-F14
12. Franca Iacovetta, interviewer. “Filipina Activists/Organizing Domestic Workers: Intercede.” Oral history interview with Martha Ocampo, Cenen Bagon, Anita Fortuno, and Genie Policarpio. RiseUp! Feminist Digital Archive, https://riseupfeministarchive.ca/collection-women-unite/filipina-activists-organizing-domestic-workers-intercede/
13. Benjamin Looker, “Staging Diaspora, Dramatizing Activism: Fashioning a Progressive Filipino Canadian Theatre in Toronto, 1974–2001,” Journal of Canadian Studies, vol. 53, no. 2 (2019) 423. https://www.utpjournals.press/doi/abs/10.3138/jcs.2018-0045
14. Carlos Bulosan Cultural Workshop, qtd. in Looker, 439.