Ana Barbi%0ń and Inga Miklav%0ńi%0ń - Brezigar
DOMESTIC WORK ABROAD 
A necessity and an opportunity for rural women from the Goria
ka borderland region
of Slovenia
The article published in : Gender, Migration and Domestic Service, ed.
Janet Momsen, Routledge, London 1999, p.p. 164-177
Presented at the Conference Gender and Rural Transformation in Europe,
Wageningen 14.-17. 10. 1999 in agreement with the co-author dr. Ana Barbi%0ń (Biotehni%0ńna fakulteta,
Univerza v Ljubljani) and the publishers.
Slovenia became an independent state in 1991 after withdrawing from the Socialist Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia. It borders with Hungary, Austria, Italy and Croatia, and has the highest per
capita Gross Domestic Product among the countries in transition, applying for membership in the
European Union. It has a marked female sex ratio with only 93.8 men per 100 women and has a
 very low marriage rate. There is a high rate of labour force participation among women (46.7
percent in 1995) and it has the sixth lowest fertility rate in the world. Both of these characteristics
may be to some extent related to the long tradition of female migrant labour examined in this paper.
The focus of this paper is the historical employment of rural Slovenian women from the borderland
of Goria
ka as maids and wet-nurses in Egypt, and the contemporary work migration or daily (or few
times a week) commuting of women from Goria
ka working as domestics for middle-class families
in Slovenian and Italian cities.
Slovenian immigrant workers in Egypt
The tradition of giving small children away to be fostered or of hiring a wet-nurse for a new-
born baby goes back many centuries. In ancient Rome women who sought employment as wet-
nurses gathered at a special place called the "colonna lactaria" (Puhar, 1982:320). The custom of
giving babies to wet-nurses led to the development of a religious cult of "honourable wet-nurses" -
"Nutrices Augustae", with temples and chapels, dedicated to them. The cult was active in the
territory of Slovenia in the 2nd and 3rd century A.D. and altar tablets from the chapel of this
Roman cult were found at Ptuj in the Eastern part of Slovenia. At this site the grave of a rich
Roman citizen were covered by the altar tablets from the obviously abandoned chapel (Tua
ek,
1986).
The mass emigration of women from Goria
ka to Egypt where they were employed as wet-nurses,
nannies and maids began in the second half of the 19th century. During the building of the Suez canal
and after its inauguration in 1869, the number of the rich European businessman living with their
families in Egypt increased, especially in the cities of Alexandria and Kairo.
Slovenian rural women, as well as some middle class urban ones, were employed by rich
European families as servants of various kinds: cooks, house-maids, nannies and wet-nurses. For
single women working as a domestic meant in many cases a life-long profession. They were able
to visit their home villages regularly but returned to Slovenia for good only when they retired. Much
2
more difficult was the emigration of married women and mothers, who often left their young babies
and went to Egypt to get well-paid jobs as wet-nurses. The massive migration of these women from
this rural area of Slovenia led to the introduction of a special term in the common language of the
Goria
ka region to describe such migrants: 'alexandrinke', from the city of Alexandria where the
majority of them worked (Makuc, 1993).
The reasons for this labour migration were almost exclusively economic. But fate kept many
women in Egypt for decades as for example, during the First and the Second World Wars, when all
connections with the home country were broken. Sometimes, although rarely, a husband and a
family joined the mother and quite often a mother took a daughter with her to Egypt, where the girl
was able to finish elementary school and get a job as a maid. Olga `
pacapan from Bilje went with
her mother after the First World War:
"Our family had to rebuilt the house, which was in ruins after the First World War. In order to
pay off the loan, my mother went to Egypt in 1926. But our family was a big one and her earnings
were meagre, so my mother went to Egypt once again in 1936. It was then that I went with her. I was
only thirteen. At the beginning she placed me in an institution in Alexandria, then I stayed with some
relatives and from them I get to my first job as a maid. My mother wanted me to train as a tailor, but
she would have to use all her earnings for the training" (Makuc, 1993: 144).
The last women from Goria
ka region, employed in domestic work in Egypt, returned home
with "callouses in their soul" (Duman%0ńi%0ń, 1994) in the 1960s and early 1970s. Mery Krpan, born in
1908, from Prva%0ńina, went to Egypt for the first time in 1932. She left her 4 year old daughter with
her sister-in-law. Five years later, in 1937, she returned home and with the money earned in Egypt,
bought a vineyard and enlarged a family property. In 1939 she gave birth to a son and seven month
later left once more for Egypt, as her husband pressed her to go and earn some money for the further
enlargement of the family property. She returned for good in 1972 after a total of 37 years of working
as a maid or as a nanny in Egypt. She lived with her son and his family till her death - I learned she
died recently, in may this year. She kept in contact with her employers, for there was mutual affection
between her and the children she took care of, even though her memories of that period of her life
were bittersweet.
3
 As already mentioned, the reasons for this kind of migration were mostly economic as the average
farms of this region has only five to ten hectares of cultivated land, which is not enough to maintain a
family. Jobs were scarce and families incurred debts rebuilding houses, destroyed during the First
World War, so migration was sometimes the only solution. Marija Mozeti%0ń's family returned from
exile after the First World War and got into debt. Marija's husband wanted to migrate to South
America but Marija would not let him go as she felt he was needed on the farm. Instead she choose to
depart herself to be a wet-nurse in Egypt and did not return for seven years. She recalls that time:
"I left my six-month old nurseling Drago at home and my sister trained him to suck the bottle;
my three-years old daughter Bojana stayed with my husband and my mother-in-law took care of
them and later also of my baby-son." (Makuc, 1993:118-119).
As good, honest workers, the women from Goria
ka as well as from other parts of Slovenia, easily
got jobs in Egypt and often became high status servants such as lady's maids and governesses.
Milena Faganelli from Miren worked as a governess educating the children from rich Egyptian
families for 35 years. Before the First World War she finished high school in Ljubljana and she left
for Alexandria in 1927. She returned to Miren in 1963. Mademoiselle Milena was the governess of
the former president of the United Nations, Butros Bitros Gali and his brother for four years. She
was also employed by the family of Albanian king Zogu, by the owner of one of the greatest
newspaper publishing house in Cairo and by the owner of the great cotton plantation (Makuc,
1993:161).
Local reactions to female labour migration
The large-scale female labour migration from Goria
ka to Egypt provoked much concern among
Church as well as civil authorities but primarily from the point of the "public morals". The first
records of Church authorities' concern about the morality of women migrants appear in the 1870s.
A curate from Bilje complained in a letter of 1871 to the archbishop's office in Gorica about the
4
great number of mothers and daughters of the village, serving as wet-nurses and maids in Egypt. A
list with the names of 27 married and 26 single women was attached to the letter (Makuc 1993:26-
27).
The village of Bilje had about 760 residents living in about 200 families at that time. The curate of
the village was scandalised mostly because "their physical and moral life is endangered and also
for the future ruined" and therefore he wanted a ban on women's emigration. It is quite clear from
the tone of his letter that the curate had very little trust in the honesty and good intentions of the
women in question. He totally ignored the economic problems of their families and did not even think
of the sacrifices and the inner sufferings of the women who were brutally separated from their children
and husbands.
In the period 1850-1950, the attitudes of male-writers toward female migration in official
documents, newspaper articles and literature is mostly disapproving as the 'physical and moral
bankruptcy' of these women can result only in 'a well-merited punishment' and bitter repentance.
This kind of male attitude appears in the two best-known Slovenian poems on this kind of
migration. These poems give a hint of the social and cultural environment of the time. The
popularly known folk song 'Beautiful Vida', written in 1831 by the great Slovenian poet France
Prea
eren, is the story of a young woman who listened to 'foolish advice' and married an old man
(probably forced by her parents to marry him for his property). She had a baby, lived morosely with
her ailing husband and baby and then went with a 'black Moor' across the sea to be a wet-nurse to
the son of the 'Spanish queen'. The song shows her departure as a longing for a better life through
the 'black Moor's' words in free translation by the authors:
"If home is no good for them, the wings they spread, the cranes,
and off across the sea they go".
The punishment for Vida is her constant memory of her ill baby son and the suffering husband, the
eternal guilt and the tears forbidden by the new mistress. A similar cruel destiny awaited the girl
Malika from Goria
ka who in the poem of another Slovenian poet Anton Aa
kerc took a job as a maid in
Egypt, ended in an Egyptian harem and returned ill and suffering to die at home. At the end of the
poem the poet warns other girls not to follow Malika's example.
Migrant Organisations
5
 The migration of Slovenian women and girls to Egypt for domestic service peaked at the end
of the 19th century. According to the approximate stimation, made by a writer and a doctor Karel
Pe%0ńko, there were over 5000 Slovenian maids in Egypt - mostly from the villages of Goria
ka,
especially from Prva%0ńina, Dornberk, Bilje, Gradia
%0ńe, `
empas. Untill the beginning of the Second
World War almost every family from these villages had at least one woman relative working in
Egypt. The Slovenian female migrants in Egypt founded a cultural society, called Sloga (Unity) and
establish the Franz-Joseph Asylum (later called St. Francis Asylum) for the Slovenian maids. The
Asylum was managed by Slovenian nuns, sisters of the Order of St. Francis and of Christ the King.
Thus, in practice, the concern of priests and secular writers for the morality of the Slovenian
girls and wives materialised in the readiness of the Church as well as of the civilian authorities to
help the Slovenian maid-servants. The Asylum and other associations organised receptions for
Slovenian women when ships landed; nuns from the Asylum or relatives came to welcome arriving
women. These organisations appointed the women to families requiring servants, ensured the maid-
servants places for social and cultural meetings, and organised clergy-men and nuns for liturgical
services in Slovenian language. The social and cultural life was organised in various Slovenian
emigrants' associations: Slovenian Palm, Union of Slovenian Women, Catholic literal association of
St. Cyril and Metod and later the Unity Association. The sisters from the Asylum in Alexandria
also ran a primary school for the children of the Slovenian emigrants.
As migration for economic reasons could not be stopped, the support of the region's social and
cultural associations helped the women to overcome long absence from home and a hard life in an
unfamiliar environment, and to maintain their bonds with their family in the homeland.
Women's views of migration
The masculine disapproval of female migration can be challenged by the feminine view.
Documents and letters, as well as interviews with the involved women, show the suffering and
emotional strain of the women torn between their job and their concern for the family and simple
sadness because of the separation from their children and husbands. Indignation at the situation of
these migrant domestics is shown in the description by sister Franka Martelanc, of the Order of St.
6
Francis, who was a manager of the St.Francis-Asylum in Alexandria and Cairo from 1929 till 1981
(Makuc, 1993:90-91):
"One can not imagine, how many tears were shed here on Sunday afternoons, when our wet-
nurses came with the children of their lords and masters and they talked to each other. They kept
asking what was happening to their own children, what were the husbands doing, how long would
grandmothers endure the pressure of taking care for their families. We witness the suffering of these
young mothers on those Sunday afternoons, as they were giving their own body and milk to the
child, that was not their own for the sake of their family. In spite of their suffering, they returned to
Egypt as the wet-nurses after each baby, for they were well paid, and the family property was
enlarged - but their suffering was high too"..."Let not this situation happen again, never more".
(Makuc 1993:91).
Only after the Second World War did the economic situation in Slovenia improve to the point, that
poverty no longer drove women to emigrate, and growth and industrialisation gave women the
opportunity to get professional education and employment near their homes.
Paid domestic work in Italy by rural women from Goria
ka
Women from Goria
ka, as well as from other parts of Slovenia, in the second half of 19th and first
half of the 20th century worked as maids not only in Egypt but also in big Italian cities of the
Northeren Italy. In Trieste there were quite a few Slovenian maids, so that the women founded a
special refuge, known as The Home of St. Nicholas. Many Slovenian women worked also in Gorica
and Milan. The exact number of those women is not known but as a large-scale phenomenon female
migration for work was confirmed by field-work among rural women in Goria
ka region.
In an interview an elderly farm women stated, that in was almost a rule for rural young women to
get employment as maids after finishing grammar school in order to earn their own money for the
"trousseau" and partly also to support their families.
7
 Compared with the situation in Egypt, there were almost no married women among the women
who went to work in the Italian cities. It was mostly young girls who started to work at about the
age of fifteen, worked as servants for a few years, and at the age of twenty to twenty-five returned to
their home village with the money they had earned, got married and settled down.
Some of them, instead of returning home, got jobs as waitresses, shop-girls or as industrial
workers. Their own income assured them of not only economic but also social independence.
They took their life into their own hands, be it in the matter of employing themselves or deciding to
whom they wanted to marry.
The longing for social independence began to be the motivation that encouraged more girls to
get a job away from the family. Being maids was usually a first step to their economic and social
emancipation as well as to building their own professional career.
Daily commuting of rural women from Goria
ka
The drive for economic independence and the urge to decide for themselves about their own lives,
became fully evident after the Second World War. The industrialisation of Socialist Yugoslavia
and of Slovenia, as one of the six republic of the federal state, resulted in the transformation of
the traditional life-style based on folk culture into a modern working class way of life, accompanied
by the related value system (Barbi%0ń, 1991).
The availability of numerous new jobs in industry represented a strong impulse for the
employment of the rural population, especially for men. At that time the majority of farm women
stayed at home to manage a farm and take care of the children. Full-time farms became part-time
ones, on which women played the role of the farmers although they were seldom formally
recognised as such.
The income, derived from the regular jobs of farm family members represented an important
contribution to the increased standard of living of the rural population in Slovenia, as well as the
new information, values and way of life that daily commuters brought back from the cities where
they worked to the rural environment, where they lived. Thus, they formed a bridge between the
cities and countryside (Barbi%0ń, 1983). With greater development of industry and the second wave
of extended employment in the sixties, rural women got jobs as well. Regular employment and
8
related economic independence, opened the door to education and professional training contributing a
great deal to the real economic and social emancipation of rural women in Slovenia.
In the 1960s and 1970s the profession of maid became almost extinct in socialist Yugoslavia.
However, some young rural women were ready to take that kind of job, either abroad or in a
diplomatic families from the upper political classes, if this was the only way to escape from the
countryside. In the new socialist regime, the domestic worker was not considered as a 'servant' but as a
'household worker' and the traditional term of maid was replaced with that of 'household helper'.
Girls usually took a job as a 'household helper' as the first step to getting a respectable, well paid
job. The employment of rural women led to a dramatic change in the traditional way of thinking
which saw getting married and raising a family as the only option for rural women. The new
opportunities for employment led to modern ways of thinking according to which having a job was
considered as important as raising a family.
Employment of rural women after the Second World War was in many cases combined with the
permanent emigration of women from their home villages, contributing to the depopulation of the
villages especially in the mountainous regions.
Sonja Cenci%0ń (1949) from Robidia
%0ńe (673 m above sea-level, a village in the mountainous area on
the border of Slovenia with Italy) left her village at the age of fifteen, going first to Ljubljana, the
capital of Slovenia and afterwards to Italy. She worked as a household helper, that is a maid as
her relatives and neighbours had done for years. When asked if she intended to return and marry in
her home-village according to the tradition that was formally acknowledged by most of her
relatives and neighbours, she categorically said:
"No, by no means, I would never marry in my home-village." She obtained a professional education
in Italy, got a job, married and has a family in Trieste, where she is still living. Sonja loves her
home village and she and her family spend weekends in their house in Robidia
%0ńe. Her refusal to
return and marry in her home village was thus a bit incomprehensible, till we discovered that
almost every family in Robidia
%0ńe was related - some even very closely related. The long tradition
of marrying within the village and some neighbouring villages, partly because of the land and
property, partly because of the emotional ties, led to s situation where the possibilities for partners
were limited to relatives. Sonja felt, perhaps unconsciously, the problem. Obviously, she was not the
only one who opposed the life in a distant mountainous village and a possible marriage to the
relative.
9
 Breaking with this tradition caused the demographic collapse of the village. Robidia
%0ńe was rather
a rich village at the beginning of the twentieth century with the 41 houses and 228 residents. In 1997
only 10 residents lived there (now they are even less  only 8 permanent settlings). Although the
migration of women was not the only cause for the village's depopulation, it was certainly an
important one.
After the 1970s women only exceptionally took a job as household helper immediately after
finishing primary school, which happened at the age of 15. Most of them continued their education
in the secondary schools or got jobs as unqualified workers in nearby industrial plants set up by the
state in order to avoid gender unbalanced job possibilities in remote rural areas of the country.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the state encouraged the full-employment of women in industry by
providing state-managed kindergartens, and meals prepared in factories and in schools.
Working class women of the socialist society of the 1970s and 1980s were in the majority of
cases the descendants of rural families. Their mothers had at least some experience of working as
maids. Thus women workers were in their childhood and adolescent years trained for domestic
work at home. Having state-organised care for children, modern household equipment (washing-
machines, refrigerators, later also dish-washers) and understanding husband, who helped them
with the domestic work when necessary, working women could quite effectually cope with
motherhood and housework while at the same time maintaining their career. The employed 'house
helpers' in socialist society disappeared. It was 'shameful' to work as a servant or maid as well as to
employ a 'domestic helper'. The words a 'lady' as well as a 'servant' were held in contempt.
There was one additional reason that stopped the migration of women from Goria
ka to the nearby
Italian cities. This was the new border between Yugoslavia and Italy, established after the Second
World War by the peace-treaty in 1947 that dramatically separated the two neighbouring states with
different political and economic systems. Thus, the Slovenian countryside was cut off from its
functional Italian urban centres Udine, Gorizia and Trieste as well as from distant metropolitan
Milan. The tradition of Slovenian girls working as maids in Italy, continued only to a limited extent.
Although the motives for migration had changed: women no longer went to Italy just to earn money
and return, but to get a 'better social position', that is, to get educated to get a better job. Still, some
elderly rural women maintained the habit of going daily to neighbouring capitalist Italy to clean the
houses of the Italian middle class. The terms 'to clean the house' or 'to help the family' , used for
paid domestic work, slowly replaced the traditional term "maid-servant". In fact, the term did not
10
suit the work of women who were employed in domestic work in Italian families on a daily basis.
They departed in the morning and returned home in the early afternoon. Sometimes their daughters
helped them in order to earn some money for themselves. For example: a graduate language
teacher earned some money to pay for a language course in this way.
After Slovenian independence in 1991 the transition from a socialist to a capitalist economy
with a free market, drammatically changed the system of employment. With the great reduction of
the work places many people lost their jobs and the number of unemployed persons increased. So
domestic work in neighbouring Italy again represented a money-earning opportunity for rural
women from Goria
ka.
Domestic service as legal and illegal work in Italy
Women and girls who continued to work as maids in Italy after the second world war worked
either legally or illegally. In the case of illegal work their employers did not report them as workers to
the state and they did not pay any social security contributions for them. Slovenian women working
legally as regularly employed workers had all the rights of the employees (social and old-age
pension insurrance, annual holidays, limited working hours). In the first case, the women mostly
worked for an Italian family once a week but had several families as their 'clients'. The total number
of work days equalled the normal length of a working week. For young girls employed for the first
time as housemaids, this kind of a job was usually considered only as the first step to a better
social position or to a marriage with a man who would be able to give them economic security.
The attitude of the 'employers' to their maids was either traditional or modern. In the traditional
relationship, the 'master' and the 'madam' are strictly distinguished from the 'maid'. In the modern
relationship, maids are regarded as members of the family. The traditional hierarchical
arrangement is usually observed in middle class Italian families, while in working-class families,
maid are normaly considered as family members. The following personal history illustrates both
types of relationships:
Vera `
trukelj, born 1951 in a little village Hoje-Levpa (730 m above sea-level) in a mountainous
region of the river So%0ńa valley, went to work as a maid in Italy after finishing primary school at the
age of 15. She was a baby-sitter to a nine months old baby in Sovodnje, a Slovenian village in Italy,
staying with an Slovenian working class family. The husband was employed as a car-mechanic in a
11
car-repairing shop, and the wife worked in a factory, working for six days a week. Both behaved to
Vera as if she was their daughter. Vera's duty was to take care of the child in the mornings, when the
'lady' worked, but she was free in the afternoons so she could meet with their friends from the village.
She had to dress and feed the child (the wife prepared the day's meals), took him for a walk and put
him to bed. She did not need to perform any housework unless she herself chose to do some
ironing, to wash the dishes or do some light domestic chores. They addressed each other by first
names.
Vera experienced a totally different relationship in her second job in Milan, which she took
when the baby, she looked after in the first family was old enough to go to a kindergarten. In Milan
Vera worked for a middle class Italian family. The 'master', a 52 years old enterpreuner and his
wife, the 'madam', an 27 years old unemployed graduate economist, had to be addressed as 'il
signore' and ' la signora'. Vera lived in their apartment, but when 'on the job' she had to wear a
uniform. She worked as a cook and maid, while the governess took care of two children. Vera
described the family, she worked for, as follows:
"La signora did not have to do anything. She went out to visit her friends, after lunch she lied
down to rest. She supervised the household and took care of thechildren when the governess had her
days off. Sometimes she helped her husband as a secretary and she went out with him to business
dinner-parties and trips".
At that time maids in Milan had two free afternoons a week (from 2 till 7 p.m.). Two times a
year, first at Christmas and New Year, they had a week's holiday, plus two weeks in the summer,
during which they usually visited their families. While Vera worked in the first family illegally to do
them a favour, with the second family she was employed regularly and insured as a worker. She
returned to her home-village for good in 1970:
"I came home because I had terrible headaches. The doctor said, that perhaps the city air is not
for me..."
12
 She returned from the city, where, according to her own words: "There was nothing to see but
walls..." to the sunny places of her home village with the splendid view over the chain of the Julian
Alps.
Motives for the migration of Slovenian rural women
The documents of church and civil authorities written exclusively by men-writers of that time
(19th century and the beginning of the 20 th century) suggest greed as the motive for the mass female
labour migration from the Goria
ka region to Egypt and insinuate that these women were in moral
peril.
In 1913 the archbishop's office at Gorica cited the following reasons: poverty, lack of food
and scarce job possibilities in the infertile parts of the country as well as a desire to earn money,
and get educated, and to become independent and to live an easy life (Makuc 1993:71).
Although the church authorities associated the 'tendency for independence' with the generally
spurious claim that the girls 'are inclined to an easy life, their deduction about the girls' desire to be
independent put the phenomenon of the female labour migration into an entirely new perspective.
Economic self-sufficiency, earning 'good money for good work' gave women a certain
psychological independence as well. With the money they earned they were able also to support their
families, who without their help would have been condemned to misery. In becoming economically
independent and family breadwinners, rural women gained the self-confidence and courage needed
to make their own decisions about their present and future life, which gave them the strenght to
take physically and psychologically difficult jobs as maids in a foreign country.
Young rural girls took employment as maids with families in Milan, Trieste and Gorizia in the
inter-war years partly because of economic concerns, but also because they saw the potential for a
better life than their mothers had had. The employment of rural women has also challenged the
prevailing socialisation pattern according to which the upbringing of girls was directed to the
objectives of being obedient persons and being trained to perform even hard physical work. It
was understood that the working on the family-farm was remunerated by a roof over the head,
food, clothes and the right to get an elementary education and the dowry at the marriage, if possible.
From the second half of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the Second World War
women began to earn their own money as early as they could after they outgrew their childhood. The
13
 family was thus relieved of the obligation to provide for them. Even more, the employed girls could
help their families by sending some money back home. But the most important aim for them was to
earn their trousseau and save some money to start a new family after returning to their village. By
leaving home and working abroad with a foreign family and in a city the women also gained a sort of
informal education: they learned Italian, sometimes even German or some other language, and they
gained new habits from the middle-class employers, which they brought back to their original rural
environment.
Motives for the contemporary employment of rural women abroad are numerous and
diversified. Economic motives are still important, but they are as urgent as they were in the past, for
the families normally today are not on the brink of survival. Still, it is a desire for a decent
standard of living that motivates women to take a job in domestic service and with the money they
earn to contribute to family income. In addition to these kinds of motives, there are also personal
reasons of economic, social and emotional nature, which draw rural women to search for domestic
work as a paid job. From the economic point of view, the personal reasons coincide with the desire
to earn their own money for their needs. From the social and emotional point of view, the personal
reasons coincide with the need to feel secure by having some saving for their old age or in the case
of illness, as well as with the needs to have contacts other people and gain new experiences. The
emotional reasons are in some cases quite important for rural women who are still  closed' in the
circle of the family in have few opportunities to be active outside the family circle. By taking a
temporary job they obtain some privacy by distancing themselves at least for a short time from
children, a husband or from other members of the family.
An advantage of domestic work is that it can be flexibly organised. Rural women can work in
the afternoons or at the weekends, when they can leave the children in care of husbands, older
children or other family members. The temporary work outside the household therefore represents a
chance for women to escape from the monotony of the everyday life with its day after day
servicing of children, husbands and elderly family members.
The story of a young woman (who wanted to stay anonymous) from a village in the
mountainous area above the river So%0ńa valley, serves as an example of such motives. She worked
in a nearby factory till she married, but stayed at home after she had a baby. She could not go back
to work, because there was no possibility of leaving the baby in someone else's care. Her husband
worked till late afternoon, as did other members of the family. But in the afternoon, her husband,
14
mother, sister or her mother-in-law could look after the baby. She could take the time to go 'to work' -
that was 'to do domestic work' for an Italian family across the border. Driving the family car, she
managed the journey and the work in a period of five to seven hours, depending on the work she
had to perform.
If there had not been opportunities to do domestic work for foreign families in a vicinity of the
Slovenian-Italian border numerous Slovenian women would not be able to obtain some economic
independence. However, it can be assumed that they could always find other opportunities such as
selling farm products, farm tourism, room-renting etc. for fulfilling their needs and desires. The
need for getting out of the household has been satisfied in Slovenia by the societies of farm women,
that have been active since 1972.
Instead of a conclusion
In the period of transition, changing from socialist to capitalist economy, and from a centrally
managed socialist political system to a democratic multi-party one, paid domestic work is again
gaining importance. Nowadays, a Slovenian family can easily find itself in a difficult economic
situation if the employed husband and father looses his job. If he can not find another job and the
task for providing the family fell on a woman. With her own meagre income or sometimes without it,
if she is not regularly employed, with two or three children she can hardly cope from the one to the
other payment day in a month.
But the family has to live and go on - and in a position like, she can do as once, our great-
grandmothers "alexandrinke" did - get herself a suitcase and some clothes and go for domestic work
abroad, where there are chances to get it.
The attitude towards the domestic work in Slovenia has slowly changed. The country women
begin to employ themselves by "going to do the house or to iron" in middle class and working-class
Slovenian families and the tendencies to employ themselves not across the border but on the
slovenian side of the border increase. The demands for the domestic work is especially in creasing
in the industrial and administrative centres of the region such as Nova Gorica, Solkan, `
empeter
and others. But the domestic work is still in the field of illegal economy for now.
Because of the specifics of the work and delicate interrelations, that occur when dealing with the
problems of domestic work and domestic workers, that problem needs a special evaluation and an
15
 appropriate transfer from the field of informal to the field of formal economy, thus insuring it a
socially acceptable status. Only in this case, the domestic work will give the opportunity for a
regular full-time or part-time occupation for numerous women, giving them the chance to gain the
total economic and social emancipation.
NOTES AND REFERENCES:
Barbi%0ń, 1983: Ana Barbi%0ń, The Farmer-worker in Yugoslavia: A Bridge Between the City and the
Countryside. Sociologia Ruralis, Van Gorcum, The Netherlands, n.4, 76-84.
Barbi%0ń, 1990: Ana Barbi%0ń, Kmetov vsakdan, Ljubljana, Cankarjeva zalo~
ba, 1990.
Barbi%0ń, 1991: Ana Barbi%0ń, K "novemu" pojmovanju ruralnosti. V: Prihodnost slovenskega
pode~
elja, ur.: Ana Barbi%0ń, Dolenjska zalo~
ba, 1991, 15-30.
Balie da latte. Una forma peculiare di emigrazione temporanea, ur. Daniela Perco, Comunita
Montana Feltrina, Centro per la Documentazione della Cultura Popolare, Feltre 1984.
Makuc, 1993: Dorica Makuc, Aleksandrinke, Goria
ka Mohorjeva dru~
ba, Gorica 1993
Tua
ek, 1986: Ivan Tua
ek, Novi rimski reliefni kamni iz Ptuja, Arheoloa
ki vestnik 37, 1986,
Kukar-Simon%0ńi%0ń, 1988: Stanka Kukar, Marjan Simon%0ńi%0ń, Siva ekonomija v Jugoslaviji, Siva
ekonomija v svetu in Jugoslavij, Delavska enotnost, Ljubljana 1988, 121-148
Pe%0ńnik, 1902: Karel Pe%0ńnik, Slovenci v Egiptu, Koledar Dru~
be sv. Mohorja za leto 1902, Gorica
1901, citirano po: Makuc, 1993;34-37
16
Puhar, 1982: Alenka Puhar, Prvotno besedilo ~
ivljenja, 
GP DELO - Globus Ljubljana 1982
Prea
eren, Zbrana dela: France Prea
eren, Zbrano delo II, Zbrana dela slovenskih pesnikov in
pisateljev, ur. Janko Kos, Ljubljana 1966
Aa
kerc, 1909: Anton Aa
kerc, Akropolis in piramide, zal. Schwentner, Ljubljana 1909
Mojca Duman%0ńi%0ń, filmski prispevek o razstavi %7ńene- matere- dojilje, razpete v boju za vsakdanji
kruh med dru`ino in tujino, Goria
ki muzej 1994, Produkcija RTV Slovenija, Ljubljana 1994
Inga Brezigar, Terenski zapisi in magnetofonski posnetki intervjujev z goria
kimi pode~
elskimi
~
enami, 1997-1998, Arhiv Goria
kega muzeja, Grad Kromberk, Nova Gorica
17