Dirty? Maybe. Degrading and dangerous? Certainly not what you'd expect to be part of a servant's job description in these supposedly enlightened times, but that's the reality thousands of domestic helpers still face in developing countries.
Hierarchy and hegemony, implicit features of every employer-employee relationship, often figure all too prominently in relations between domestic helpers and those who employ them because of the menial nature of the labor involved and the fact that the workplace is a private home.
This is particularly the case in certain Asian societies, where class-based divisions remain strong, the socioeconomic gulf separating servants and their employers is much wider than in more developed countries and workers receive little or no protection under the law.