Filipinos and Maids?

I was halfway watching a singaporean movie when this thought suddenly hit me,

"Why are Filipinos always associated with being maids?"

Maybe this isn't really obvious here in Malaysia, but as long as i know, many of my friends out there especially in Singapore and Hong Kong bear this mindset in their mind.

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I remembered Kelly, a friend of mine that went to the SEA games in Manila, told me that she overheard a bunch of kids from Singapore telling their parents: "Wow, look there's a lot of nanies in here" during an event. She even told me way back a well publicized dictionary actually published the term Filipino being synonymous with Maids or Domestic Helpers. It ofcourse, created quite a chaos in the Philippines.
Even in the dramas and movies too, they are always called maria or mariann and the maids are usually represented by Filipinos.

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Well, before i move on, let me be frank here that I am not trying to offend anyone. Sorry, if this post offended anyone, but i really have no intention of it.






Back to the topic,
Have you ever wondered why?

Well, most people believe it in this way, at least, i do :

1) Even Filipino people with university or college degrees would have to leave their home country to work as domestic helpers in order to support their family's needs. It just shows how bad the employment issue is and the main factors why they are moving abraod to work as maids. Imagine even when fresh grads can be working as domestic helpers, what more the others?

2) I believe this stereotyping exist because they occupy most of this profession otuside of Philipines, and the fact that they do their job well and generally have better English abilities than others which made them more preferable in this proffesion.

Personally, I think it's not right and it's not fair for all Filipinos to be stereotyped as maids. Like what we learned in Human Communication, it is human nature that we tend to cling on to the first impression. Isn't it unfair when most of the dramas and movies (especially the chinese one) have Filipinos as maids? Well, for most of us, we might know think that way, but what about for others that are outside the Asia, that really do not have any idea on how Filipinos are, don't u think they can fall into this stereotype since it's all on the first impression that they receive?
We also learned that the first impression will always be the lasting impression, isn't in unfair for others in Philiphines to be labeled just like that?
It's just like people in the U.S associating Koreans with dry cleaning, and Vietnamese with nail salons just because that it's all the first impression they have on them which will not suprisingly, form that lasting impressions on them.





@posted by, grace.