According to available sources, the trend of having a maid for carrying out domestic chores has been in existence since the Victorian period. The rich and the royal homes hired young women who were presentable and at the same time well versed in household jobs, to work as maids especially to the lady of the household. The main job of the then maids was to assist the lady of the house and carry out specified tasks. In some households they were hired to care the infants and kids. They were supposed to be in-house full time maids who were to be available for services round the clock. This arrangement was however restricted to the rich and the royal class and not the ordinary people since the expenditure and the affordability was something that a common man could not think of. Nevertheless, whatever the household was, the maid was supposed to carry out certain mandatory duties like washing, sweeping, mopping and cooking. So in a way the life of a maid was flashy in terms of living in a posh house, going around with the lady of the household in wagons and cars and equally tough when seen in terms of household chores.
While this was during the Victorian era, as times passed the role of maids in a household became more significant and was considered as a necessity more than a luxury. In recent times, with the emergence of a worldwide economic order, the shift in demographic composition, division of labour and other regulations, has undoubtedly transformed the concept of domestic work into an essential profession which plays a major role in defining the link between family, the job and the related dynamics of economy as well. Coming to the middle era, where the maid would voluntarily offer herself for jobs like nanny, housemaid and care for elderly and infants, and due to the scarcity of maids, the prospective maid had a good number of options. As time passed on fairs were being held where the interaction of the employer and the maid would take place in the presence of a known person from either side and the process would go on. With the beginning of the middle-class families and their requirements of maids, young girls from poorer section started to move towards big cities in search of maid jobs.
This drifting of work force brought about a lot of changes and slowly and steadily the advent of maid agencies was one of the major developments that began to take shape. In the initial stages maid agencies carried out the hiring process by way of manual operations and as the processes underwent advancement both technically and otherwise, automation of the maid agencies also took place and in today’s contemporary and fast life, where everything is digitalised and carried online, so is the maid hiring process. Development of portals like housemaid.com.sg, has totally transformed the maid hiring process into simple and easy task.
