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Domestic worker

A domestic worker is a person who works within a residence and performs a variety of household services for an individual, from providing cleaning and household maintenance, or cooking, laundry and ironing, or care for children and elderly dependents, and other household errands. The term "domestic service" applies to the equivalent occupational category. In traditional English contexts, such a person was said to be "in service".

Some domestic workers live within their employer's household. In some cases, the contribution and skill of servants whose work encompassed complex management tasks in large households have been highly valued. However, for the most part, domestic work tends to be demanding and is commonly considered to be undervalued, despite often being necessary. Although legislation protecting domestic workers is in place in many countries, it is often not extensively enforced. In many jurisdictions, domestic work is poorly regulated and domestic workers are subject to serious abuses, including slavery.

Servant is an older English word for "domestic worker", though not all servants worked inside the home. Domestic service, or the employment of people for wages in their employer's residence, was sometimes simply called "service" and has often been part of a hierarchical system. In Britain, a highly developed system of domestic service peaked towards the close of the Victorian era (a period known in the United States as the Gilded Age and in France as the Belle Époque), perhaps reaching its most complicated and rigidly structured state during the Edwardian period which reflected the limited social mobility before World War I.

History
In 2015, the International Labour Organization (ILO), based on national surveys or censuses of 232 countries and territories, estimated the number of domestic workers at 67.1 million, but the ILO itself states that "experts say that due to the fact that this kind of work is often hidden and unregistered, the total number of domestic workers could be as high as 100 million". The ILO also states that 83% of domestic workers are women and many are migrant workers.

In Guatemala, it is estimated that 11.8% percent of all women working in 2020 were employed as domestic workers. They hardly have any legal protection. According to Guatemalan labor law, domestic work is "not subject to schedules or limitations of working day." However, by law, domestic workers are still entitled to ten hours of free time in 24 hours, and an additional six hours off on Sundays. But very often, these minimal employment laws are disregarded, and so are basic civil liberties.

In Brazil, domestic workers must be hired under a registered contract and have many of the rights of any other workers, which includes a minimum wage, remunerated vacations and a remunerated weekly day off. It is not uncommon, however, for employers to hire servants illegally and fail to offer a work contract. Since domestic staff predominantly come from disadvantaged groups with less access to education, they are often vulnerable and uninformed of their rights, especially in rural areas. Nevertheless, domestics employed without a proper contract can successfully sue their employers and be compensated for abuse committed. It is common in Brazil for domestic staff, including childcare staff, to be required to wear uniforms, while this requirement has fallen out of use in other countries.

In the United States, domestic workers are generally excluded from many of the legal protections afforded to other classes of worker, including the provisions of the National Labor Relations Act. However, in recent years, advocacy groups like the National Domestic Workers' Alliance have succeeded in passing a Domestic Worker's Bill of Rights in New York, Hawaii, California, and Illinois.

Traditionally domestic workers have mostly been women and are likely to be immigrants. Currently, there are 1.8 million domestic workers, and tens of thousands of people are believed to be in forced labor in the United States. America's domestic home help workers, most of them female members of minority groups, earn low wages and often receive no retirement or health benefits because of the lack of basic labor protections.

Domestic workers are also excluded from vacation time, sick time, and overtime, and only thirteen percent of domestic workers get health insurance provided by their employers. A report from the National Domestic Workers Alliance and affiliated groups found that nearly a quarter of nannies, caregivers, and home health workers make less than the minimum wage in the states in which they work, and nearly half – 48 percent – are paid less than needed to adequately support a family. Many of these workers are subjected to abuse, sexual harassment, and social inequality. However, because domestic workers work in the home, their struggles are hidden in the home and out of the public spotlight. Nowadays with an increase of power, the domestic workers' community has formed many organizations, such as the National Domestic Workers Alliance, Domestic Workers United, and The South African Domestic Service and Allied Workers Union.

The domestic work industry is dominated throughout the world by women. While the domestic work industry is advantageous for women in that it provides them a sector that they have substantial access to, it can also prove to be disadvantageous by reinforcing gender inequality through the idea that domestic work is an industry that should be dominated by women. Within the domestic work industry, the much smaller proportion of jobs that is occupied by men are not the same jobs that are typically occupied by women. Within the childcare industry, men make up only about 3–6% of all workers. Additionally, in the child care industry men are more likely to fill roles that are not domestic in nature but administrative such as a managerial role in a daycare center.

While the domestic work industry was once believed to be an industry that belonged to a past type of society and did not belong in a modern world, trends are showing that although elements of the domestic work industry have been changing the industry itself has shown no signs of fading away, but only signs of transformation. There are several specific causes that are credited to continuing the cycle of the demand for domestic work. One of these causes is that with more women taking up full-time jobs, a dually employed household with children places a heavy burden on parents. It is argued however that this burden would not result in the demand for outside domestic work if men and women were providing equal levels of effort in domestic work and child-rearing within their own home.

The demand for domestic workers has also become primarily fulfilled by migrant domestic workers from other countries who flock to wealthier nations to fulfill the demand for help at home. This trend of domestic workers flowing from poorer nations to richer nations creates a relationship that on some levels encourages the liberation of one group of people at the expense of the exploitation of another. Although domestic work has far from begun to fade from society, the demand for it and the people who fill that demand has changed drastically over time.

The so-called "servant problem" in such countries as the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada was the problem that middle-class families had with cleaning, cooking, and especially entertaining at the level that was socially expected. It was too much work for any one person to do herself, but middle-class families, unlike wealthy families, could not afford to pay the wages necessary to attract and retain skilled household employees.

Legal protections
The United Kingdom's Master and Servant Act 1823 was the first of its kind; the terms referred generally to employers and employees. The Act influenced the creation of domestic service laws in other nations, although legislation tended to favour employers. However, before the passing of such Acts servants, and workers in general, had no protection in law. The only real advantage that domestic service provided was the provision of meals, accommodation, and sometimes clothes, in addition to a modest wage. Service was normally an apprentice system with room for advancement through the ranks.

The conditions faced by domestic workers have varied considerably throughout history and in the contemporary world. In the course of twentieth-century movements for labour rights, women's rights and immigrant rights, the conditions faced by domestic workers and the problems specific to their class of employment have come to the fore.

In 2011, the International Labour Organization adopted the Convention Concerning Decent Work for Domestic Workers. Previously, at its 301st Session (March 2008), the International Labour Organization (ILO) Governing Body agreed to place an item on decent work for domestic workers on the agenda of the 99th Session of the International Labour Conference (2010) with a view to the setting of labour standards. In July 2011, at the annual International Labour Conference, held by the ILO, conference delegates adopted the Convention on Domestic Workers by a vote of 396 to 16, with 63 abstentions. The Convention recognized domestic workers as workers with the same rights as other workers. On 26 April 2012, Uruguay was the first country to ratify the convention.

Accommodation
Many domestic workers are live-in domestics. Though they often have their own quarters, their accommodations are not usually as comfortable as those reserved for the family members. In some cases, they sleep in the kitchen or small rooms, such as a box room, sometimes located in the basement or attic. Domestic workers may live in their own home, though more often they are "live-in" domestics, meaning that they receive their room and board as part of their salaries. In some countries, because of the large gap between urban and rural incomes, and the lack of employment opportunities in the countryside, even an ordinary middle class urban family can afford to employ a full-time live-in servant. The majority of domestic workers in China, Mexico, India, and other populous developing countries, are people from the rural areas who are employed by urban families.

Employers may require their domestic workers to wear a uniform, livery or other "domestic workers' clothes" when in their employers' residence. The uniform is usually simple, though aristocratic employers sometimes provided elaborate decorative liveries, especially for use on formal occasions. Female servants wore long, plain, dark-coloured dresses or black skirts with white belts and white blouses, and black shoes, and male servants and butlers would wear something from a simple suit, or a white dress shirt, often with tie, and knickers. In traditional portrayals, the attire of domestic workers especially was typically more formal and conservative than that of those whom they serve. For example, in films of the early 20th century, a butler might appear in a tailcoat, while male family members and guests appeared in lounge suits or sports jackets and trousers depending on the occasion. In later portrayals, the employer and guests might wear casual slacks or even jeans, while a male domestic worker wore a jacket and tie or a white dress shirt with black trousers, necktie or bowtie, maybe even a waistcoat, or a female domestic worker either a blouse and skirt (or trousers) or a uniform.

On 30 March 2009, Peru adopted a law banning employers from requiring domestic workers to wear a uniform at public places. However, it has not explained which punishments will be given to employers violating the law. Chile adopted a similar law in 2014, also banning employers to require domestic workers to wear uniform at public places.

Child workers
More girls under 16 work as domestic workers than any other category of child labor. Usually, in a practice often called "confiage" or entrusting, such as for restaveks in Haiti, parents in the rural poverty make an agreement with someone in the cities who would house and send their child to school in return for domestic work.

Such children are very vulnerable to exploitation: often they are not allowed to take breaks or are required to work long hours; many suffer from a lack of access to education, which can contribute to social isolation and a lack of future opportunity. UNICEF considers domestic work to be among the lowest status, and reports that most child domestic workers are live-in workers and are under the round-the-clock control of their employers. Child domestic work is common in countries such as Bangladesh and Pakistan. In Pakistan, since January 2010 to December 2013, 52 cases of tortures on child domestic workers are reported including 24 deaths. It has been estimated that globally, at least 10 million children work in domestic labor jobs.

Children face a number of risks that are common in domestic work service. The International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour identified that these risks include: long and tiring working days; use of toxic chemicals; carrying heavy loads; handling dangerous items such as knives, axes and hot pans; insufficient or inadequate food and accommodation, and humiliating or degrading treatment including physical and verbal violence, and sexual abuse.

Migrant domestic workers
Migrant domestic workers are, according to the International Labour Organization's Convention No. 189 and the International Organization for Migration, any persons “moving to another country or region to better their material or social conditions and improve the prospect for themselves or their family,” engaged in a work relationship performing “in or for a household or households.” Domestic work itself can cover a "wide range of tasks and services that vary from country to country and that can be different depending on the age, gender, ethnic background and migration status of the workers concerned." These particular workers have been identified by some academics as situated within "the rapid growth of paid domestic labor, the feminization of transnational migration, and the development of new public spheres.”

Social effects
As women currently dominate the domestic labor market throughout the world, they have learned to navigate the system of domestic work both in their own countries and abroad in order to maximize the benefits of entering the domestic labor market.

Among the disadvantages of working as a domestic worker is the fact that women working in this sector are working in an area often regarded as a private sphere. Feminist critics of women working in the domestic sphere argue that this woman-dominated market is reinforcing gender inequalities by potentially creating mistress-servant relationships between domestic workers and their employers and continuing to put women in a position of lesser power. Other critics point out that working in a privatized sphere robs domestic workers of the advantages of more socialized work in the public sphere.

Additionally, domestic laborers face other disadvantages. Their isolation is increased by their invisibility in the public sphere and the repetitive, intangible nature of their work decreases its value, making the workers themselves more dispensable. The level of isolation women face also depends on the type of domestic work they are involved with. Live-in nannies for example may sacrifice much of their own independence and sometimes become increasingly isolated when they live with a family of which they are not part and away from their own.

While working in a dominantly female privatized world can prove disadvantageous for domestic workers, many women have learned how to help one another move upward economically. Women find that informal networks of friends and families are among the most successful and commonly used means of finding and securing jobs.

Without the security of legal protection, many women who work without the requisite identity or citizenship papers are vulnerable to abuse. Some have to perform tasks considered degrading showing a manifestation of employer power over worker powerlessness. Employing domestic work from foreign countries can perpetuate the idea that domestic or service work is reserved for other social or racial groups and plays into the stereotype that it is work for inferior groups of people.

Gaining employment in the domestic labor market can prove to be difficult for immigrant women. Many subcontract their services to more established women workers, creating an important apprenticeship type of learning experience that can produce better, more independent opportunities in the future. Women who work as domestic workers also gain some employment mobility. Once established they have the option of accepting jobs from multiple employers increasing their income and their experience and most importantly their ability to negotiate prices with their employers.

England
In 19th- and early 20th-century England the close supervision exercised by mistresses over their servants (including the rule "no followers", "followers" being any men whom the servant might wish to meet when she was not working) was a great disadvantage. This policy was justified by the low esteem in which servants were held; therefore men they associated with were likely to include some with criminal tendencies. The servant and writer Margaret Powell expressed the view that "follower" was a degrading term; the only way the two could meet was by the servant getting out to the road with an excuse such as needing to post a letter.

Canada
Domestic helpers in Canada, mainly from the Philippines, work in Canada, including under the Live-In Caregiver program.

France
In his Tableau de Paris, Louis-Sébastien Mercier describes the characteristics of the manservants (lackeys) of pre-revolutionary Paris. "An army of useless servants is kept entirely for show"; he observes that the presence of these servants in the capital has left the countryside rather empty. A tax-farmer's household consists of 24 servants in livery, besides scullions, kitchen maids and six lady's maids. Some lackeys would adopt the manners of their masters and affect a similar mode of dress.

Hong Kong
Domestic helpers (DHs, foreign domestic workers, FDWs) from certain other countries, especially the Philippines and Indonesia, work in Hong Kong on specific visas that exempt employers from many obligations received by other workers, and receive a lower minimum salary. Approximately five percent of Hong Kong's population are FDWs, about 98.5% of them are women, performing household tasks such as cooking, serving, cleaning, dishwashing and child care.

During the COVID-19 epidemic, all foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong have to be vaccinated before their contracts can be renewed, the government announced as it ordered them to undergo mandatory COVID-19 testing on 9 May 2021.

Vietnam
On December 14, the Government of Viet Nam issued Decree No. 145/2020 / ND-CP about the Labor Code regarding working conditions and labor relations. Including detailed provisions and guidance for the implementation of Clause 2, Article 161 of the Labor Code regarding domestic worker labor. This Decree details and guides the implementation of a number of contents on labor conditions and labor relations in accordance with the following articles and clauses of the Labor Code: Labor management; Labor contract; Labor outsourcing; Organize dialogue and implement grassroots democracy at work; Salary; Working time, rest time; Labor discipline, material responsibility; Insurance for the domestic worker; Female labor and gender equality; Labor is the housekeeper; Settlement of labor disputes.

Kenya
In Kenya, domestic workers – nearly all female – are known as 'housegirls'. Often from poor villages in neighbouring Uganda, girls are open to exploitation, and there are calls for stronger legal protection.

Philippines

In the Philippines, domestic household workers/helpers such as maidservants (katulong/kasambahay), caretakers (yaya), family drivers (drayber/tsuper), laundrywomen (labandera/tagalaba), gardeners (hardinero), security guards (guwardiya/bantay), pool cleaners have been a norm in upper class Philippine society for an uncertain amount of time already, perhaps even connected to or influenced from the household slaves/servants in precolonial times of the Philippines that were divided into aliping namamahay and aliping saguiguilid, as indentured household servants. In modern times, it has been a norm among upper and upper-middle-class families in the Philippines to hire at least one maidservant-caretaker (katulong/kasambahay/yaya) to care for the household and children. Most, particularly maidservant-caretakers (katulong/kasambahay/yaya), live together in the house of their master's family with usually only a day off per month. This practice has eventually influenced the architecture of some houses or apartment condos where it has become a norm to section a room where domestic maidservants sleep as their personal room, usually near the kitchen or laundry area. Some wealthy families also section off an area or house where all the maidservants sleep or a part of the kitchen where they eat separate from the master's table. There are also employment agencies and special government laws regarding the regulation of domestic worker employment, such as the "Domestic Workers Act" or "Batas Kasambahay" in Republic Act No 10361. Many live underpaid since many are informally hired or salaries are not declared truthfully to government offices or have an agreement instead to pay through other means, such as paying for their education, pension, or to send money back to their families. This practice was eventually exported to neighboring countries and all other countries that overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) have worked in, such as the United States, Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, China, Saudi Arabia, and other countries in the Middle East, etc., hence some maidservants continue living with the same mindset of how domestic worker culture was practiced in the Philippines. This has also, at times, been used as a cause to look down upon overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in the countries where they can be found. It has sometimes created controversies in other countries such as abuse charges in several countries in the Middle East or like the case of Flor Contemplacion, who was executed in Singapore for murder allegations. There have also been documentaries or rom-com movies made in the Philippines about the plight or life of domestic workers, particularly maidservant-caretakers (katulong/kasambahay/yaya).

The Central Luzon Regional Tripartite Wages and Productivity Board approved Wage Order RBH-DW-O4 on March 4, 2024, "increasing the monthly wage rate of kasambahay by P1,000 in chartered cities and first class municipalities, and P1,500 in other municipalities, effectively bring the monthly minimum wage in the region to P6,000." The National Wages and Productivity Commission affirmed the Order on March 12, 2024, and will take effect on April 1, 2024.

Singapore
Data from Singapore's Ministry of Manpower (MOM), showed that in June 2019 there were some 255,800 Foreign Domestic Workers (FDW) in Singapore. The demand for Foreign Domestic Workers came about from the desire of the Singapore government to employ local women in the workforce. Starting with the Foreign Maid Scheme in 1978, Malaysia (with whom there were special immigration arrangements), Bangladesh, Burma, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand were recruiting grounds for domestic workers. Nearly 20% of Singapore household has a domestic worker which has been attributed to rising wealth, parents who both work as well as the ageing population. As of 2019, MOM require that employers of FDWs must purchase them medical insurance with a minimum coverage of S$15,000 per year.

Saudi Arabia
According to a 2008 report by Human Rights Watch (HRW), the Saudi Ministry of Labor provided official figures of 1.2 million household workers in Saudi Arabia including domestic workers, drivers, and gardeners. The report stated that the Gulf country employed nearly 1.5 million women domestic workers from Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Philippines. Domestic workers estimated approximately 600,000 from Indonesia, 275,000 from Sri Lanka and 200,000 from Philippines. However, HRW reported that a number of domestic workers in Saudi Arabia face a range of abuses. Besides, the organization also interviewed Saudi labor and social affairs official, who acknowledged the issue of domestic worker abuse. The report stated that no accurate figure exists to highlight the total violations of labor rights and other human rights that women migrant domestic workers confront in the Arab nation.

South Africa
The domestic work sector occupies around 6 per cent of the total work force in South Africa, with domestic workers being largely Black African women. As in other countries, working conditions in the sector are generally characterised by informality and exploitation. In 2013, South Africa ratified ILO C189 Convention on Domestic Workers, recognising domestic work as work and formalising it through labour contracts, wages, social protection, health and safety in the workplace, and rights to organising as well as social dialogue. However, significant challenges remain with implementation. Furthermore, the minimum wage of domestic workers is set to 75 per cent of the national minimum wage.

United Kingdom
The United Kingdom English country houses and great houses employed many live-in domestic workers with distinctive roles and chain of command. The lord of the manor would hire a butler to oversee the servants. Manorialism dates back to the Middle Ages and slowly died out. The British historical drama television series Downton Abbey portrayed these roles. The wealthy in the city would also have domestic workers, but fewer and with less distinctive roles. Domestic workers were mostly considered part of the lower class and some middle class.

In modern times, migrant domestic workers have been brought in to the UK to fill the demand for low-cost workers. Human rights groups have added that they are often subject to abuse.

Black Americans post-Civil War to World War I
In the United States, slavery legally ended in 1865, however, the Freedmen's Bureau informed the former slaves now classified as freedmen and women that they could either sign labor contracts with white planters or be evicted from the land that they had lived on. Most freedmen in the South signed labor contracts with their former white slave owners because that was the only work experience they had. With limited skills and illiteracy, many men turned to become sharecroppers, whereas the majority of women participated in domestic work. Not only were they not qualified for other jobs, but they were denied other jobs and segregated from American society purely based on the color of their skin. The South wanted to keep segregation alive and hence passed legislation such as the Jim Crow Laws post-Civil war which denied African Americans of legal equality and political rights. These laws kept many African Americans as a second-class status up until new laws ended segregation in the 1960s.

Up until the mid-twentieth century, domestic work was a prominent source of income for many women of different ethnic backgrounds. Many of these women were either African American or immigrants. More specifically, the post-civil war South had a high concentration of African Americans working as domestic workers. At the turn of the nineteenth century, there was also a high concentration of African Americans working as domestic workers in the North. Many African American women migrated to the North for better work opportunities and higher wages compared to their employment options in the South. The African American women who worked as domestic workers were generally treated as poor, childlike beings that were seen as victims of their own ignorance of living in communities of crime and other societal infringements. However, despite the stereotypes labeled upon domestic workers, these women still settled for these positions because the only occupations that were open to African American women before World War I were domestic services. It was necessary they worked along with their husbands in order to keep their families financially supported.

Frequently underpaid, African American servants commonly took food scraps and discarded clothing from their employers in a practice known as “pan toting” or the “service pan”. The service pan augmented wages in almost two-thirds of the employers' households in Athens, Georgia, in 1913. The pan system was used by employers to justify paying a lower wage, and used by domestic workers to counter their employers' dishonesty. Whites also pointed to the practice of pan toting as proof that “a Negro could not help but steal”, thereby reinforcing stereotypes of “black inferiority and dependency” and rationalizing racist paternalism.

Black Americans in the Great Depression
Due to the Great Depression, many domestic workers lost their jobs. This is because many white families lost their source of income and were not able to pay domestic workers to work in their home. At this time, many domestic workers relied on asking strangers on the street for housework such as cleaning. They house jumped, looking for any job that they could get. The domestic workforce was significantly impacted by the Great Depression which caused a decrease in their wages and an intolerable 18 hour workday. Also, agricultural workers and the African American women working as domestic workers at this time were explicitly excluded from Social Security and the Fair Labor Standards Act in the New Deal legislation; domestic workers of all races were excluded from Social Security until 1950. (Household employees working at least two days a week for the same person were added to Social Security coverage in 1950, along with nonprofit workers and the self-employed. Hotel workers, laundry workers, all agricultural workers, and state and local government employees were added in 1954. ) This is because the New Dealer politicians were more worried about losing support from the Southern Democrats in Congress who supported segregation rather than refusing coverage for many African Americans. Unlike their white counterparts, African Americans did not form labor unions because they lacked the resources, consciousness, and the access to networks used for union recruiting. On top of that, the domestic workers would not typically have earned enough money to be able to afford being a part of a union. Even if the African American domestic workers wanted to advance in society, it was nearly impossible because the racial structures in the United States rarely allowed them class mobility. However, domestic workers that were white such as the Irish and the Germans utilized working in middle-class homes to their advantage. Working in the middle-class homes served to Americanize, allowing the workers to identify more with their employers than women of their own class and instilled an aspiration to become middle-class status.

Black Americans in 1960s America
Nearly ninety percent of African American women worked as domestic workers during the Civil Rights Movement era. Their participation in the Civil Rights Movement went fairly undocumented. Despite their low-status career in the United States, they were beneficial for the betterment of society and the status of the African American race. It has been noted that the southern African American women were the backbone of the Civil Rights Movement.

Since many white households relied on the African American domestic workers for housework, the workers were able to have a direct impact on the white race when rebelling for their civil rights. The African American domestic workers boycotted buses and tried to register to vote, and many were denied and imprisoned. However, the domestic workers utilized imprisonment to educate other African American women on the Civil Rights Movement and what to do to contribute. Additionally, the domestic workers frequently rebelled in an informal manner, such as resisting to live in the same home in which they worked. By doing this, the African American domestic workers transformed the domestic services, and collective organizations came about promoting a better work environment for African American domestic workers. Their act of rebellion gave way for a change of how they were treated, how they were paid, and how they were respected.

Varieties of domestic workers
The following is a list of known domestic workers:

 * Au pair – A foreign-national domestic assistant working for and living as part of, a host family.
 * Amanuensis – A person employed to write or type what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another.
 * Ayah – A job that is similar to a nanny's. Mostly found in South and Southeast Asia.
 * Babysitter – A worker who minds the children of someone else.
 * Bedder / bedmaker – A worker who rearranges and organizes bedding to prepare it for later use.
 * Between maid – An in-between maid whose duties are half in the reception rooms and half in the kitchen.
 * Boot boy – A young male servant, employed mostly to perform footwear maintenance and minor auxiliary tasks.
 * Butler – A senior employee usually found in larger households, traditionally a man, whose duties customarily include overseeing the wine cellar, the silverware and some oversight of the other, usually male, servants.
 * Casual staff - Part-time extra external worker.
 * Chambermaid – A maid whose chief focus is on cleaning and maintaining bedrooms, ensuring fires are lit in fireplaces when needed, and supplying hot water.
 * Charwoman (Char or Saturday's woman) – A female house or office cleaner, usually part-time.
 * Chauffeur – A personal driver (for motor vehicles).
 * Cleaner – A worker who cleans homes, institutions or commercial premises.
 * Cook – This is either a cook who works alone or the head of a team of cooks who work for their employer.
 * Coachman- Drives horse carriage and in charge of the stables.
 * Dairymaid - Hand milked the animals, make butter and other dairy products.
 * Dog walker – A worker who walks dogs.
 * Footman – A lower-ranking manservant.
 * Game keeper - Care and maintaining the bird and deer population on a large estate.
 * Gardener (Grounds keeper) – A worker who tends to the garden.
 * Gatekeeper - Job of guarding the main entrance to the estate.
 * Groundskeeper – A worker who tends to the person's large property.
 * Hall boy – The lowest ranking male servant who is usually found only in large households.
 * Handyman – A worker who handles household repairs.
 * Head Gardener in charge of all gardening.
 * Horse trainer – A worker who trains the horses for those who own them.
 * Houseboy – A worker who does personal chores.
 * Housekeeper – A housekeeper usually denotes a female senior employee.
 * Kitchen maid – A worker who works for the cook.
 * Lackey – A runner who may be overworked and underpaid.
 * Lady's maid – A woman's personal attendant, helping her with her clothes, shoes, accessories, hair, and cosmetics.
 * Lady-in-waiting - Royal Lady's maid
 * Laundress – A laundry servant.
 * Maid (Housemaid) – Female servants who perform typical domestic tasks.
 * Majordomo – The senior-most staff member of a very large household or stately home. See also Seneschal.
 * Masseur/Masseuse – A servant who performs massages.
 * Nanny (children's Nurse) – A woman who takes care of infants and children.
 * Nursemaid (Nursery maid) – A maid who oversees the nursery.
 * Page or Tea boy - An Apprentice footman, 10 to 16 years old.
 * Parlour maid - Cleaning the sitting rooms, drawing rooms, library and alike.
 * Personal shopper – A person who does the shopping.
 * Personal trainer – A worker who trains their employer in fitness, swimming, and sports.
 * Porter - Like a hall boy, but older with added building security duties.
 * Pool person – A worker who works by the swimming pool.
 * Postilion - Rode the left horse if there was no coachman.
 * Retainer (Retinue and Affinity) – A servant, especially one who has been with one family for a long time (chiefly British English).
 * Scullery maid – The lowest-ranking of the domestic workers who act as assistants to the kitchen maid.
 * Stable boy or Groom – A worker who handles the management of the horses and the stables.
 * Stable Master - Responsible for running the stables.
 * Storeroom maid - Maintaining the stores of linens, foodstuffs, pantry and household supplies.
 * Valet – Known as the "gentleman's gentleman", a valet is responsible for the master's wardrobe and assisting him in dressing, shaving, etc. In the armed forces, some officers have a soldier (in the British army called a batman) for such duties.
 * Wet nurse – A nurse who provides suckling for infants if mothers cannot or do not wish to do so themselves.

There are other professions that work and may live in the household, but are not considered domestic workers, as they would not be housed with the domestic staff. Professions like: Tutor or Governess, secretary, librarian, private chaplains, physician, personal trainer, and Lady's companion.

Notable workers
Some domestic workers have become notable, including: Abdul Karim (the Munshi), servant of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom; Paul Burrell, butler to Diana, Princess of Wales; Moa Martinson, author of proletarian literature, kitchen maid; and Charles Spence, Scottish poet, stonemason and footman.

In religion

 * Saint Zita, the patron saint of domestic servants
 * Category:Canonised servants of the Romanov household

In fiction

 * A Little Princess, a book made into several films
 * Alfred Pennyworth, Bruce Wayne's faithful butler, created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger
 * Amelia Bedelia, children's comedy fiction
 * Beryl's Lot, a British television series based on Margaret Powell's memoirs of domestic service
 * Cinderella, a fairytale, cartoon, and film
 * Downton Abbey, a British television series set in a large English country house
 * Edwin Jarvis, the butler of Tony Stark
 * Gone with the Wind, a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novel and Academy Award-winning film
 * The Diary of a Chambermaid, a novel by Octave Mirbeau
 * The Help, a novel by Kathryn Stockett
 * The Remains of the Day, Booker Prize–winning novel
 * Upstairs, Downstairs, a British television series set in London
 * Upstairs Downstairs (remake), a British television series set in London
 * You Rang, M'Lord?, a British television comedy series

title: Domestic worker


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Lofa County

Lofa is a county in the northernmost portion of Liberia. One of 15 counties that constitute the first-level of administrative division in the nation, it has nine districts. Voinjama serves as the capital with the area of the county measuring 3854 mi2. As of the 2022 Census, it had a population of 367,376, making it Liberia's fourth most populous county.

Lofa's County Superintendent is William Tamba Kamba. The county is bordered by Bong County to the south and Gbarpolu County to the west. The northwestern parts of Lofa border the nation of Sierra Leone, and the northeastern parts border Guinea. Mount Wuteve, the highest mountain in Liberia, lies in the north-central part of the county.

History
Lofa County was established from the former Western Province in 1964. The civil war, which began in 1989, adversely affected the county. Many people left the area as refugees in 1999 and the early 2000s as it became a main focus of fighting during the Liberian civil war. The Red Cross said that in January 2004, many people had begun to return from refugee camps in neighboring Guinea and Sierra Leone. At that time, the county's population was estimated to be 34,310. Pakistan Army UNMIL peacekeepers were in place by 2005.

The largest city and county capital is Voinjama, with a population of 4,945. Foya is the second largest city (population 1,760). Lofa produced one of the nation's most respected leaders in the late vice president Dr. Harry F. Moniba who served from 1984 to 1990.

Another notable son of Lofa is President Joseph Nyumah Boakai, who previously served as Liberia's Vice President during the Ellen Sirleaf Administration for 12 years from 2006 to 2018, and is currently the President of Liberia as of 2024.

Geography
The Western part of the county has coastal plains that rise to a height of 30 m above the sea-level inward to a distance of 25 km. These plains receive a very high rainfall ranging from 4450 mm to 4500 mm per year and receive longer sunshine with a humidity of 85 to 95 percent. It is swampy along rivers and creeks, while there are patches of Savannah woodland. Rice and cassava interplanted with Sugarcane are the major crops grown in the region. Lofa County has a community forest, the Bluyeama, occupying an area of 44444 ha. It has three National proposed reserves, namely the Wologizi Mountain (99538 ha), Wonegizi Range (37979 ha) and Foya Forest (164628 ha). It has the Foya Afforestation Project with an area of 9062.4 ha, which is designated as a National Plantation area.

Demographics
As of 2008, the county had a population of 276,863: 133,611 male and 143,252 female. The sex ratio was 93.3 compared to 107.8 in the 1994 census. The number of households during 2008 was 45,095, and the average size of the households was 5.5. The population was 9.50 percent of the total population, while it was 8.00 percent in 1994. The county had an area of 3,854 sq mi, and the density per sq mi was 72. The density during the 1984 census stood at 52. Liberia experienced civil war during various times, and the total number of people displaced on account of wars as of 2008 in the county was 128,178. The number of people residing in urban areas was 83,150, with 40,592 males and 42,558 females. The total number of people in rural areas was 193,713, with 93,019 males and 100,694 females. The total fraction of people residing in urban areas was 30.03 percent, while the remaining 070 percent lived in rural areas. The number of people resettled as of 2008 was 32,959, while the number of people who were not resettled was 13,399. The number of literates above the age of ten as of 2008 was 79,196, while the number of illiterates was 66,907 making the literacy rate to 54.21. The total number of literate males was 47,865, while the total number of literate females was 31,331.

Economy
As of 2011, the area of rice plantation was 40500 ha, which was 16.961 percent of the total area of rice planted in the country. The total production stood at 8570 metric tonnes. As of 2011, the number of Cassava plantations was 9090, which was 7.4 percent of the total area of cassava planted in the country. The total production stood at 11250 metric tonnes. The number of cocoa plantations was 11250, 29.1 percent of the total area of cassava planted in the country. The number of rubber plantations was 810, 1.3 percent of the total area of cassava planted in the country. The number of coffee plantations was 11,000, 49.3 percent of the total area of cassava planted in the country. As of 2008, the county had 4,323 paid employees, 38,287 self-employed people, 73,046 family workers, 4,565 people looking for work, 6,048 not working people, 23,682 people working in households, 40,653 students, 606 retired people, 4,951 incapacitated people, 1,582 part-time workers and 24,418 others, making the total working population of 222,161.

Administration
Lofa County has six districts (2008 population): Foya District (100,000), Kolahun District (59,057), Salayea District (22,968), Vahun District (16,876), Voinjama District (40,730), and Zorzor District (40,352). The Legislature of Liberia was modeled based on the Legislature of the United States. It is bicameral with a Senate and the House of Representatives. There are 15 counties in the country, and based on the population, each county is defined to have at least two members, while the total number of members to the house, including the Speaker, is 64. Each member represents an electoral district and is elected to a six-year term based on popular vote. There were 30 senators, two each for the 15 counties, and they serve a nine-year term (30 senators, 15 counties, and nine years from 2011). Senators are also elected based on a plurality of votes. The vice-president is the head of the Senate and acts as president in the president's absence.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Lofa County


text:
Robert Fagles

Robert Fagles (September 11, 1933 – March 26, 2008) was an American translator, poet, and academic. He was best known for his many translations of ancient Greek and Roman classics, especially his acclaimed translations of the epic poems of Homer. He taught English and comparative literature for many years at Princeton University.

Life
Fagles was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Charles Fagles, a lawyer, and Vera Voynow Fagles, an architect. He attended Amherst College, graduating in 1955 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. The following year, he received his master's degree from Yale University. On June 17, 1956, he married Marilyn (Lynne) Duchovnay, a teacher, and they adopted two children. In 1959, Fagles received his Ph.D in English from Yale and for the next year taught English there.

From 1960 to 1962, Fagles was an English instructor at Princeton University. In 1962 he was promoted to assistant professor, and in 1965 became an associate professor of English and comparative literature. Later that year he became director of the comparative literature program. In 1970, he became a full professor, and from 1975 was the department chair. He retired from teaching as the Arthur W. Marks '19 Professor of Comparative Literature in 2002, and remained a professor emeritus at Princeton.

Between 1961 and 1996, Fagles translated many ancient Greek works. His first translation was of the poetry of Bacchylides, publishing a complete set in 1961. In the 1970s, Fagles began translating much Greek drama, beginning with Aeschylus's The Oresteia. He went on to publish translations of Sophocles's three Theban plays (1982), Homer's Iliad (1990) and Odyssey (1996), and Virgil's Aeneid (2006). In these last four, Bernard Knox authored the introduction and notes. Fagles's translations generally emphasize contemporary English phrasing and idiom but are faithful to the original as much as possible.

In 1978, Fagles published I, Vincent: Poems from the Pictures of Van Gogh. He was the co-editor of Homer: A Collection of Critical Essays (1962) and Pope's Iliad and Odyssey (1967).

Fagles died at his home in Princeton, New Jersey, on March 26, 2008, from prostate cancer.

Awards
Fagles was nominated for the National Book Award in Translation and won the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award of the Academy of American Poets in 1991 for his translation of the Iliad. In 1996, he received an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for his translation of the Odyssey. In 1997 he received the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for lifetime achievement in translation. Fagles later undertook a new English translation of the Aeneid, which was published in November 2006.

In addition to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Fagles was also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

He received a National Humanities Medal by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

On June 8, 2011, a resource center devoted to the study of the Classics was dedicated to Dr. Fagles at Princeton High School. At the dedication, students and teachers paid tribute to Dr. Fagles.

Translations

 * Bacchylides, Complete Poems (1961)
 * Aeschylus, The Oresteia (1975)
 * Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays (1982)
 * Antigone
 * Oedipus the King
 * Oedipus at Colonus
 * Homer, The Iliad (1990)
 * Homer, The Odyssey (1996)
 * Virgil, The Aeneid (2006)

title: Robert Fagles


text:
Football in Japan

Football is among the most popular sports in Japan,  together with baseball, tennis, golf, sumo, and combat sports. Its nationwide organization, the Japan Football Association, administers the professional football leagues, including J.League, which is considered by many the most successful football league in Asia. Japan is also the country with the most comprehensively developed football in Asia in both men and women as well as in both futsal and beach soccer.

Football
Although the official English name of the Japan Football Association uses the term "football", the term, derived from "soccer", is much more commonly used than. The JFA's Japanese name is Nippon Sakkā Kyōkai.

Before World War II the term in general use was, a Sino-Japanese term. With previously exclusive Japanese terms replaced by American influence after the war, sakkā became more commonplace. In recent years, many professional teams have named themselves F.C.s (football clubs), with examples being FC Tokyo and Kyoto Sanga FC.

History
The introduction of football in Japan is officially credited by the Japan Football Association, and numerous academic papers and books on the history of association football in Japan, to then Lieutenant-Commander Archibald Lucius Douglas of the Royal Navy and his subordinates, who from 1873 taught the game and its rules to Japanese navy cadets while acting as instructors at the Imperial Japanese Navy Academy in Tsukiji, Tokyo.

The first official football match in Japan is widely believed to have been held on February 18, 1888, between the Yokohama Country & Athletic Club and Kobe Regatta & Athletic Club. YC&AC is the oldest running association football club in Japan as Association Football was introduced into the club on December 25, 1886, for training sessions starting from January 1887. The first Japanese association football club, founded as a football club, is considered to be Tokyo Shukyu-dan, founded in 1917, which is now competing in the Tokyo Prefectural amateur league.

In the 1920s, football associations were organised and regional tournaments began in universities and high schools especially in Tokyo. In 1930, the Japan national association football team was organised and had a 3–3 tie with China for their first title at the Far Eastern Championship Games. The Japan national team also participated in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, the team had the first victory in an Olympic game with a 3–2 win over powerful Sweden.

Aside from the national cup, the Emperor's Cup established in 1921, there had been several attempts at creating a senior-level national championship. The first was the All Japan Works Football Championship (AJWFC), established in 1948 and open only to company teams. The second was the All Japan Inter-City Football Championship (AJICFC), established in 1955 and separating clubs by cities (any club, works, university or autonomous, could represent their home city and qualify) but the Emperor's Cup remained dominated by universities until the late 1950s. All these tournaments were cups following single-elimination formulas, similar to Serie A in Italy before 1929.

The first organized national league, the Japan Soccer League, was organized in 1965 with eight amateur company clubs and replaced the AJWFC and AJICFC. At the 1968 Mexico Olympic Games, the Japan national team, filled with the top JSL stars of the era, had its first big success winning third place and a bronze medal. Olympic success spurred the creation of a Second Division for the JSL and openings for the first few professional players, in the beginning, foreigners (mainly Brazilians), and a few from other countries, which also led to the country hosting its first international competition, the 1979 FIFA World Youth Championship. Japanese players, however, remained an amateur, having to work day jobs for the companies owning the clubs (or other companies if their clubs were autonomous). This limited the growth of the Japanese game, and many better Japanese players had to move abroad to make a living off the game, such as Yasuhiko Okudera, the first Japanese player to play in a professional European club, (1. FC Köln of Germany). UEFA and CONMEBOL aided the Japanese awareness of football by having the Intercontinental Cup played in Tokyo as a neutral venue.

In 1993, the Japan Professional Football League (commonly known as the J.League) was formed replacing the semi-professional Japan Soccer League as the new top-level club competition in Japan. It consisted of some of the top clubs from the old JSL, fully professionalized, renamed to fit communities and with the corporate identity reduced to a minimum. The new higher-standard league attracted many more spectators and helped the sport to hugely increase in popularity. The professionalized league also offered, and offers, incentives for amateur non-company clubs to become part of their ranks with no major backing from a company; major examples of community, non-company-affiliated clubs who rose through the prefectural and regional ranks into the major leagues are Albirex Niigata and Oita Trinita.

Japan participated in its first-ever World Cup tournament at the 1998 FIFA World Cup held in France. In 2002, Japan co-hosted the 2002 FIFA World Cup with Republic of Korea. After this, the association football communities of both countries received the FIFA Fair Play Award. The Japanese national team has reached the round of 16 on four occasions – as hosts in 2002, where they were knocked out by Turkey 1–0, in 2010, where they lost to Paraguay in penalties, in 2018 where they fell 2–3 to Belgium, and in the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Japan also qualified for the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany, the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa and the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil.

Football in fiction
The first worldwide popular association football-oriented Japanese animation (manga) series, Captain Tsubasa, was started in 1981. Captain Tsubasa was extremely popular among children of both genders in Japan. Its success led to much more association football manga being written, and it played a great role in association football history in Japan. Playing football became more popular than playing baseball in many schools throughout Japan from the 1980s due to the series.

Captain Tsubasa has also inspired the likes of prominent footballers such as Hidetoshi Nakata, Seigo Narazaki, Zinedine Zidane, Francesco Totti, Fernando Torres, Christian Vieri, Giuseppe Sculli, James Rodríguez, Alexis Sánchez and Alessandro Del Piero to play association football and choose it as a career. The inspiration for the character of Tsubasa Oozora came from a number of players, including most prominently Musashi Mizushima, arguably the first Japanese footballer to play abroad, and whose move to São Paulo FC as a ten-year-old boy was partly mimicked in the manga.

The anime Giant Killing revolves around a team's efforts to go from one of the worst professional teams in Japan to the best. Other works focusing on football include Hungry Heart: Wild Striker (from the same author of Captain Tsubasa), The Knight in the Area, Days, Inazuma Eleven and Blue Lock.

Women's football
As in European countries, Japanese women's football is organized on a promotion and relegation basis. The top flight of women's association football is the semi-professional L. League (currently billed as the Nadeshiko League). Most clubs are independent clubs, although the recent trend is to have women's sections of established J.League clubs.

The national team has enjoyed major success at the FIFA Women's World Cup, having achieved its greatest triumph ever by winning the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup in Germany and finishing as runner-up in 2015 in Canada.

Small-sided football

 * Japan national futsal team
 * F.League (Futsal league)
 * FIFA Futsal World Cup
 * AFC Futsal Asian Cup
 * AFC Futsal Club Championship
 * WMF World Cup

Domestic tournaments

 * J.League (Japan Professional Football League) is the top national league in Japan with a J1, J2 and J3 League.
 * Japan Football League (JFL) is the national amateur league.
 * Emperor's Cup (since 1921) the national open cup.
 * J.League Cup is the cup restricted to J.League members (usually J1 alone).
 * All Japan Adults Football Tournament, cup for clubs in regional leagues below JFL.
 * Japan Regional Football Champions League, round-robin elimination tournament for the promotion of regional-league clubs into JFL.

Other international tournaments held in Japan

 * 1958 3rd Asian Games, Tokyo
 * 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games
 * 1979 FIFA World Youth Championship
 * 1992 AFC Asian Cup, Hiroshima
 * 1993 FIFA U-17 World Championship
 * 1994 12th Asian Games, Hiroshima
 * 1998 Dynasty Cup, Tokyo & Yokohama Dynasty Cup
 * 2001 FIFA Confederations Cup (joint with South Korea)
 * 2002 FIFA World Cup (joint with South Korea)
 * Intercontinental Cup / Toyota European/South American Cup (1981–2004)
 * 2005–2008, 2011–2012, 2015–2016 FIFA Club World Cup
 * 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games

Japanese footballers

 * Kunishige Kamamoto (1944– ), Top scorer in 1968 Summer Olympics.
 * Yasuhiko Okudera (1952– ), first Japanese player in the European League (Bundesliga).
 * Kazuyoshi Miura (1967– ), Asian Footballer of the Year in 1993 and also currently the oldest person still playing professional football, at the age of 57.
 * Masami Ihara (1967– ), Asian Footballer of the Year in 1995
 * Masashi Nakayama (1967– ), first Japanese player to score a goal in a FIFA World Cup
 * Hidetoshi Nakata (1977– ), Asian Footballer of the Year in 1997 and 1998
 * Shunsuke Nakamura (1978–), Scottish Professional Footballers' Association Player of the Year in 2007
 * Homare Sawa (1978–), FIFA Women's World Player of the Year in 2011 and one of only two players of either sex to participate in six World Cup final tournaments
 * Shinji Ono (1979– ), Asian Footballer of the Year in 2002
 * Yasuhito Endō (1980– ), Most capped (152) player

Men's national team achievements

 * 1968 Mexico Olympic Games – Bronze Medal
 * 1992 2nd Dynasty Cup 1992 – Champions
 * 1992 10th Asian Cup – Champions
 * 1993 5th Afro-Asian Nations Cup – Champions
 * 1995 3rd Dynasty Cup – Champions
 * 1998 4th Dynasty Cup – Champions
 * 1999 FIFA World Youth Championship – Silver Medal
 * 2000 12th Asian Cup – Champions
 * 2001 FIFA Confederations Cup – Silver Medal
 * 2002 FIFA World Cup – Round of 16
 * 2004 13th Asian Cup – Champions
 * 2006 FIFA World Cup – Group Stage
 * 2007 14th Asian Cup – Semi-final
 * 2010 FIFA World Cup – Round of 16
 * 2011 15th Asian Cup – Champions
 * 2014 FIFA World Cup – Group Stage
 * 2015 16th Asian Cup – Quarter Final
 * 2018 FIFA World Cup – Round of 16
 * 2019 17th Asian Cup – Runners-up
 * 2022 FIFA World Cup – Round of 16
 * 2023 AFC Asian Cup –　Quarter-finals

Women's national team achievements

 * 1986 AFC Women's Championship – Runners-up
 * 1989 AFC Women's Championship – Third place
 * 1990 Asian Games – Silver Medal
 * 1991 AFC Women's Championship – Runners-up
 * 1993 AFC Women's Championship – Third place
 * 1994 Asian Games – Silver Medal
 * 1995 FIFA Women's World Cup – Quarter-finals
 * 1995 AFC Women's Championship – Runners-up
 * 1997 AFC Women's Championship – Third place
 * 1998 Asian Games – Bronze Medal
 * 2001 AFC Women's Championship – Runners-up
 * 2002 Asian Games – Bronze Medal
 * 2006 Asian Games – Silver Medal
 * 2008 AFC Women's Asian Cup – Third place
 * 2010 AFC Women's Asian Cup – Third place
 * 2010 Asian Games – Gold Medal
 * 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup – Champions
 * 2012 London Olympic Games – Silver Medal
 * 2014 AFC Women's Asian Cup – Champions
 * 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup – Runners-up
 * 2018 AFC Women's Asian Cup – Champions
 * 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup – Round 16
 * 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games – Quarter Final
 * 2022 AFC Women's Asian Cup – Semi-final

Football stadiums in Japan
Stadiums with a capacity of 50,000 or higher are included.

title: Football in Japan


text: User talk:213.237.12.22

title: User talk:213.237.12.22


text:
Talk:Prose

divisions of prose
can you list the divisions of prose and a little definition to it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Phil2011.13 (talk • contribs) 13:10, 11 August 2011 (UTC) (Phil 2011.13)

Prose Poetry
This article claims that "Some works of prose do contain traces of metrical structure or versification and a conscious blend of the two literature formats is known as prose poetry." This is very far from any standard definition of prose poetry. Much more to the point is the Wikipedia description that it is "poetry written in prose instead of using verse but preserving poetic qualities such as heightened imagery and emotional effects." I think if this sentence at should be kept, it should be changed to better reflect a correct definition of prose poetry. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.119.235.95 (talk) 03:07, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Tricky point
Much of the text in "literature, newspapers, magazines, encyclopedias, broadcasting, film, history, philosophy, law" does not apply "ordinary grammatical structure and natural flow of speech". Perhaps I will come across here as a pedant, but it seems important to note that titles, tables, legends, text within diagrams, equations, footnotes, references etc. are often in stylized forms which have their own grammar and are not similar to the natural flow of speech. In some texts that would, overall, clearly be classed as prose, this may make up a large percentage of the words used. I'm not sure what the solution is, and whether the literature is pag iyot na babae such things are considered part of the text or as things appended to it. It might be mentioned somewhere though, perhaps distinguishing the body of a text from additional, structural or illustrative material. --Halftone (talk) 10:42, 22 June 2012 (

Evil Paragraph
"Novels, essays, short stories, and works of criticism are examples of prose. Other examples include: comedy, drama, fable, fiction, folk tale, hagiography, legend, literature, myth, narrative, saga, science fiction, story, theme, tragedy." This paragraph is bad. The problem is the identification of prose with what's called "literature". Many of the above forms (and how did "theme" get in there?) are not necessarily prose. The Odyssey is not prose but is folk tale, legend, literature, myth, narrative, saga and story.

"Prose" is used most often in the context of big-el Literature because that's where a word meaning "not poetry written in meter" has most currency, and so I notice that the list leaves out in an apparently systematic way stuff like: news stories, letters, diaries, textbooks, judicial opinions, news tickers. It's possible to write pretty much anything in strict meter, so these forms don't call for prose as a matter of necessity either, but they're easily as prosaic as those given as examples in the above quote.

I'm cutting the paragraph. Genialimbecile (talk) 00:10, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

TAFI setup
 Bananasoldier  (talk) 04:54, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

 * 5x expansion requirement: 10175 = 2035 x 5

External links modified
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Rhythm
The idea that prose lacks rhythm surely isn't correct (see, for example ; ). Rwood128 (talk) 11:26, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

 * I have also commented on the Literature Talk page:
 * This sentence from the "Background" section is relevant here: "There are critical debates on the construction of prose: "... the distinction between verse and prose is clear, the distinction between poetry and prose is obscure". "

 * I have made an edit. Rwood128 (talk) 12:15, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

title: Talk:Prose


text:
Small-world experiment

The small-world experiment comprised several experiments conducted by Stanley Milgram and other researchers examining the average path length for social networks of people in the United States. The research was groundbreaking in that it suggested that human society is a small-world-type network characterized by short path-lengths. The experiments are often associated with the phrase "six degrees of separation", although Milgram did not use this term himself.

Historical context of the small-world problem
Guglielmo Marconi's conjectures based on his radio work in the early 20th century, which were articulated in his 1909 Nobel Prize address, may have inspired Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy to write a challenge to find another person to whom he could not be connected through at most five people. This is perhaps the earliest reference to the concept of six degrees of separation, and the search for an answer to the small world problem.

Mathematician Manfred Kochen and political scientist Ithiel de Sola Pool wrote a mathematical manuscript, "Contacts and Influences", while working at the University of Paris in the early 1950s, during a time when Milgram visited and collaborated in their research. Their unpublished manuscript circulated among academics for over 20 years before publication in 1978. It formally articulated the mechanics of social networks, and explored the mathematical consequences of these (including the degree of connectedness). The manuscript left many significant questions about networks unresolved, and one of these was the number of degrees of separation in actual social networks.

Milgram took up the challenge on his return from Paris, leading to the experiments reported in "The Small World Problem" in the May 1967 (charter) issue of the popular magazine Psychology Today, with a more rigorous version of the paper appearing in Sociometry two years later. The Psychology Today article generated enormous publicity for the experiments, which are well known today, long after much of the formative work has been forgotten.

Milgram's experiment was conceived in an era when a number of independent threads were converging on the idea that the world is becoming increasingly interconnected. Michael Gurevich had conducted seminal work in his empirical study of the structure of social networks in his MIT doctoral dissertation under Pool. Mathematician Manfred Kochen, an Austrian who had been involved in statist urban design, extrapolated these empirical results in a mathematical manuscript, Contacts and Influences, concluding that, in an American-sized population without social structure, "it is practically certain that any two individuals can contact one another by means of at least two intermediaries. In a [socially] structured population it is less likely but still seems probable. And perhaps for the whole world's population, probably only one more bridging individual should be needed." They subsequently constructed Monte Carlo simulations based on Gurevich's data, which recognized that both weak and strong acquaintance links are needed to model social structure. The simulations, running on the slower computers of 1973, were limited, but still were able to predict that a more realistic three degrees of separation existed across the U.S. population, a value that foreshadowed the findings of Milgram.

Milgram revisited Gurevich's experiments in acquaintanceship networks when he conducted a highly publicized set of experiments beginning in 1967 at Harvard University. One of Milgram's most famous works is a study of obedience and authority, which is widely known as the Milgram Experiment. Milgram's earlier association with Pool and Kochen was the likely source of his interest in the increasing interconnectedness among human beings. Gurevich's interviews served as a basis for his small world experiments.

Milgram sought to develop an experiment that could answer the small world problem. This was the same phenomenon articulated by the writer Frigyes Karinthy in the 1920s while documenting a widely circulated belief in Budapest that individuals were separated by six degrees of social contact. This observation, in turn, was loosely based on the seminal demographic work of the Statists who were so influential in the design of Eastern European cities during that period. Mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, born in Poland and having traveled extensively in Eastern Europe, was aware of the Statist rules of thumb, and was also a colleague of Pool, Kochen and Milgram at the University of Paris during the early 1950s (Kochen brought Mandelbrot to work at the Institute for Advanced Study and later IBM in the U.S.). This circle of researchers was fascinated by the interconnectedness and "social capital" of social networks.

Milgram's study results showed that people in the United States seemed to be connected by approximately three friendship links, on average, without speculating on global linkages; he never actually used the phrase "six degrees of separation". Since the Psychology Today article gave the experiments wide publicity, Milgram, Kochen, and Karinthy all had been incorrectly attributed as the origin of the notion of "six degrees"; the most likely popularizer of the phrase "six degrees of separation" is John Guare, who attributed the value "six" to Marconi.

The experiment
Milgram's experiment developed out of a desire to learn more about the probability that two randomly selected people would know each other. This is one way of looking at the small world problem. An alternative view of the problem is to imagine the population as a social network and attempt to find the average path length between any two nodes. Milgram's experiment was designed to measure these path lengths by developing a procedure to count the number of ties between any two people.

Basic procedure

 * 1) Though the experiment went through several variations, Milgram typically chose individuals in the U.S. cities of Omaha, Nebraska, and Wichita, Kansas, to be the starting points and Boston, Massachusetts, to be the end point of a chain of correspondence. These cities were selected because they were thought to represent a great distance in the United States, both socially and geographically.
 * 2) Information packets were initially sent to "randomly" selected individuals in Omaha or Wichita. They included letters, which detailed the study's purpose, and basic information about a target contact person in Boston. It additionally contained a roster on which they could write their own name, as well as business reply cards that were pre-addressed to Harvard.
 * 3) Upon receiving the invitation to participate, the recipient was asked whether he or she personally knew the contact person described in the letter. If so, the person was to forward the letter directly to that person. For the purposes of this study, knowing someone "personally" was defined as knowing them on a first-name basis.
 * 4) In the more likely case that the person did not personally know the target, then the person was to think of a friend or relative who was more likely to know the target. They were then directed to sign their name on the roster and forward the packet to that person. A postcard was also mailed to the researchers at Harvard so that they could track the chain's progression toward the target.
 * 5) When and if the package eventually reached the contact person in Boston, the researchers could examine the roster to count the number of times it had been forwarded from person to person. Additionally, for packages that never reached the destination, the incoming postcards helped identify the break point in the chain.

Results
Shortly after the experiments began, letters would begin arriving to the targets and the researchers would receive postcards from the respondents. Sometimes the packet would arrive to the target in as few as one or two hops, while some chains were composed of as many as nine or ten links. However, a significant problem was that often people refused to pass the letter forward, and thus the chain never reached its destination. In one case, 232 of the 296 letters never reached the destination.

However, 64 of the letters eventually did reach the target contact. Among these chains, the average path length fell around five and a half or six. Hence, the researchers concluded that people in the United States are separated by about six people on average. Although Milgram himself never used the phrase "six degrees of separation", these findings are likely to have contributed to its widespread acceptance.

In an experiment in which 160 letters were mailed out, 24 reached the target in his home in Sharon, Massachusetts. Of those 24 letters, 16 were given to the target by the same person, a clothing merchant Milgram called "Mr. Jacobs". Of those that reached the target at his office, more than half came from two other men.

The researchers used the postcards to qualitatively examine the types of chains that are created. Generally, the package quickly reached a close geographic proximity, but would circle the target almost randomly until it found the target's inner circle of friends. This suggests that participants strongly favored geographic characteristics when choosing an appropriate next person in the chain.

Criticisms
There are a number of methodological criticisms of the small-world experiment, which suggest that the average path length might actually be smaller or larger than Milgram expected. Four such criticisms are summarized here:

 * 1) Judith Kleinfeld argues that Milgram's study suffers from selection and non-response bias due to the way participants were recruited and high non-completion rates. First, the "starters" were not chosen at random, as they were recruited through an advertisement that specifically sought people who considered themselves well-connected. Another problem has to do with the attrition rate. If one assumes a constant portion of non-response for each person in the chain, longer chains will be under-represented because it is more likely that they will encounter an unwilling participant. Hence, Milgram's experiment should underestimate the true average path length. Several methods have been suggested to correct these estimates; one uses a variant of survival analysis in order to account for the length information of interrupted chains, and thus reduce the bias in the estimation of average degrees of separation.
 * 2) One of the key features of Milgram's methodology is that participants are asked to choose the person they know who is most likely to know the target individual. But in many cases, the participant may be unsure which of their friends is the most likely to know the target. Thus, since the participants of the Milgram experiment do not have a topological map of the social network, they might actually be sending the package further away from the target rather than sending it along the shortest path. This is very likely to increase route length, overestimating the average number of ties needed to connect two random people. An omniscient path-planner, having access to the complete social graph of the country, would be able to choose a shortest path that is, in general, shorter than the path produced by a greedy algorithm that makes local decisions only.
 * 3) A description of heterogeneous social networks still remains an open question. Though much research was not done for a number of years, in 1998 Duncan Watts and Steven Strogatz published a breakthrough paper in the journal Nature. Mark Buchanan said, "Their paper touched off a storm of further work across many fields of science" (Nexus, p60, 2002). See Watts' book on the topic: Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age.
 * 4) Some communities, such as the Sentinelese, are completely isolated, disrupting the otherwise global chains. Once these people are discovered, they remain more "distant" from the vast majority of the world, as they have few economic, familial, or social contacts with the world at large; before they are discovered, they are not within any degree of separation from the rest of the population. However, these populations are invariably tiny, rendering them of low statistical relevance.

In addition to these methodological criticisms, conceptual issues are debated. One regards the social relevance of indirect contact chains of different degrees of separation. Much formal and empirical work focuses on diffusion processes, but the literature on the small-world problem also often illustrates the relevance of the research using an example (similar to Milgram's experiment) of a targeted search in which a starting person tries to obtain some kind of resource (e.g., information) from a target person, using a number of intermediaries to reach that target person. However, there is little empirical research showing that indirect channels with a length of about six degrees of separation are actually used for such directed search, or that such search processes are more efficient compared to other means (e.g., finding information in a directory).

The social sciences
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, based on articles originally published in The New Yorker, elaborates on the "funneling" concept. Gladwell condenses sociological research, which argues that the six-degrees phenomenon is dependent on a few extraordinary people ("connectors") with large networks of contacts and friends: these hubs then mediate the connections between the vast majority of otherwise weakly connected individuals.

Recent work in the effects of the small world phenomenon on disease transmission, however, have indicated that due to the strongly connected nature of social networks as a whole, removing these hubs from a population usually has little effect on the average path length through the graph (Barrett et al., 2005).

Mathematicians and actors
Smaller communities, such as mathematicians and actors, have been found to be densely connected by chains of personal or professional associations. Mathematicians have created the Erdős number to describe their distance from Paul Erdős based on shared publications. A similar exercise has been carried out for the actor Kevin Bacon and other actors who appeared in movies together with him — the latter effort informing the game "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon". There is also the combined Erdős-Bacon number, for actor-mathematicians and mathematician-actors. Players of the popular Asian game Go describe their distance from the great player Honinbo Shusaku by counting their Shusaku number, which counts degrees of separation through the games the players have had.

Current research on the small-world problem
The small-world question is still a popular research topic today, with many experiments still being conducted. For instance, Peter Dodds, Roby Muhamad, and Duncan Watts conducted the first large-scale replication of Milgram's experiment, involving 24,163 e-mail chains and 18 targets around the world.

Dodds et al. also found that the mean chain length was roughly six, even after accounting for attrition. A similar experiment using popular social networking sites as a medium was carried out at Carnegie Mellon University. Results showed that very few messages actually reached their destination. However, the critiques that apply to Milgram's experiment largely apply also to this current research.

Network models
In 1998, Duncan J. Watts and Steven Strogatz from Cornell University published the first network model on the small-world phenomenon. They showed that networks from both the natural and man-made world, such as power grids and the neural network of C. elegans, exhibit the small-world phenomenon. Watts and Strogatz showed that, beginning with a regular lattice, the addition of a small number of random links reduces the diameter—the longest direct path between any two vertices in the network—from being very long to being very short. The research was originally inspired by Watts' efforts to understand the synchronization of cricket chirps, which show a high degree of coordination over long ranges as though the insects are being guided by an invisible conductor. The mathematical model which Watts and Strogatz developed to explain this phenomenon has since been applied in a wide range of different areas. In Watts' words:

"I think I've been contacted by someone from just about every field outside of English literature. I've had letters from mathematicians, physicists, biochemists, neurophysiologists, epidemiologists, economists, sociologists; from people in marketing, information systems, civil engineering, and from a business enterprise that uses the concept of the small world for networking purposes on the Internet."

Generally, their model demonstrated the truth in Mark Granovetter's observation that it is "the strength of weak ties" that holds together a social network. Although the specific model has since been generalized by Jon Kleinberg, it remains a canonical case study in the field of complex networks. In network theory, the idea presented in the small-world network model has been explored quite extensively. Indeed, several classic results in random graph theory show that even networks with no real topological structure exhibit the small-world phenomenon, which mathematically is expressed as the diameter of the network growing with the logarithm of the number of nodes (rather than proportional to the number of nodes, as in the case for a lattice). This result similarly maps onto networks with a power-law degree distribution, such as scale-free networks.

In computer science, the small-world phenomenon (although it is not typically called that) is used in the development of secure peer-to-peer protocols, novel routing algorithms for the Internet and ad hoc wireless networks, and search algorithms for communication networks of all kinds.

In popular culture
Social networks pervade popular culture in the United States and elsewhere. In particular, the notion of six degrees has become part of the collective consciousness. Social networking services such as Facebook, Linkedin, and Instagram have greatly increased the connectivity of the online space through the application of social networking concepts.

title: Small-world experiment


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Grand Cape Mount County

Grand Cape Mount is a county in the northwestern portion of the West African nation of Liberia. One of 15 counties that constitute the first-level of administrative division in the nation, it has five districts. Robertsport serves as the capital with the area of the county measuring 1993 mi2. As of the 2008 Census, it had a population of 129,817, making it the eighth most populous county in Liberia. The county is bordered by Gbarpolu County to the northeast and Bomi County to the southeast. The northern part of Grand Cape Mount borders the nation of Sierra Leone, while to the west lies the Atlantic Ocean.

The name of the county comes from Cape du Mont, a French word meaning the Cape of the Mount. In 1461, Pedro de Sintra, a Portuguese explorer charting the West Coast of Africa, saw the prominent feature of the cape and chose its name.

History
Portuguese explorer Pedro de Sintra discovered the area in 1461.

The 300-foot-tall Cape Mount became the landmark for settlers in the region. Theodore Canot formed the settlement in 1840.

In 1847, Liberia became independent with three counties: Montserrado, Grand Bassa, and Sinoe. A local government was formed after signing a treaty with the locals in 1849, while Robertsport was established in 1856. The area now known as Grand Cape Mount became the territory of Grand Cape Mount under Montserrado County.

In 1856, Cape Mount was carved out of Montserrado by a legislative act and became the fifth County in Liberia. The superintendent is Aaron Vincent.

Geography
Grand Cape County accommodates the national protected area of Lake Piso Reserve with an area of 97159 ha and the national plantation of Industrial Trial Pulpwood Plantation, which occupies an area of 1026 ha. The Western part of the county has coastal plains up to a height of 30 m above sea-level inward to a distance of 25 km. These plains receive very high rainfall ranging from 4450 mm to 4500 mm per year and receive longer sunshine with a humidity of 85 to 95 percent. It is swampy along rivers and creeks, while there are patches of savannah woodland. Rice and cassava interplanted with sugarcane are the major crops grown in the region. The northern or the upper part of the highland has tropical forest which is usually 30 m above the mean sea level. The regions receive a bimodal rainfall with a gap of two weeks in between. Cocoa, coffee, rubber, citrus oil, and palm are the most common crops in the region.

Demographics
As of 2008, the county had a population of 127,812: 65,679 male and 62,133 female. The sex ratio was 105.7 compared to 89.2 in the 1994 census. The number of households during 2008 was 18,143 and the average size of the households was 5.2. The population was 3.80 percent of the total population, while it was 3.70 percent in 1994. The county had an area of 1,846 sq mi and the density per square mile was 69. The density during the 1984 census stood at 43. Liberia experienced civil war during various times and the total number of people displaced on account of wars as of 2008 in the county was 44,486. The number of people residing in urban areas was 8,145, with 4,022 males and 4,123 females. The total number of people in rural areas was 118,931, with 61,657 males and 57,274 females. The total fraction of people residing in urban areas was 6.37 percent, while the remaining .093 percent were living in rural areas. The number of people resettled as of 2008 was 24,316 while the number of people who were not resettled was 2,897. The number of literates above the age of ten as of 2008 was 53,824 while the number of illiterates was 40,346 making the literacy rate 57.16 percent. The total number of literate males was 31,435 while the total number of literate females was 22,389. An estimated 60 percent of the population speaks the Vai language and 70 percent are Muslim.

Government The Legislature of Liberia was modeled based on the Legislature of the United States. It is bicameral in nature with a Senate and the House of Representatives. There are 15 counties in the country and based on the population each county is defined to have at least two members, with the total number of members to the house including the Speaker being 64. Each member represents an electoral district and is elected to a six-year term based on popular vote. There were 26 senators, two each for the 13 counties and they serve a nine-year term (30 senators, 15 counties, and nine years from 2011). Senators are also elected based on a plurality of votes. The Vice-President is the head of the Senate and he also acts as President in his absence. As of 2015, Grand Cape Mount's County Superintendent is Tenneh Simpson Kpadebah. Its five districts are (2008 population): Commonwealth District (6,884), Garwula District (29,371), Gola Konneh District (23,930), Porkpa District (40,921) and Tewor District (27,949).

Economy
As of 2011, the area of rice plantation was 7320 ha, which was 3.066 percent of the total area of rice planted in the country. The total production stood at 7400 metric tonnes. As of 2011, the number of Cassava plantations was 4000, which was 3.3 percent of the total area of Cassava planted in the country. The total production stood at 400 metric tonnes. The number of Cocoa plantations was 400, which was 1 percent of the total area of Cassava planted in the country. The number of rubber plantations was 770, which was 1.2 percent of the total area of Cassava planted in the country. The number of Coffee plantations was 380, which was 1.7 percent of the total area of Cassava planted in the country. As of 2008, the county had 2,686 paid employees, 13,695 self-employed people, 15,578 family workers, 4,868 people looking for work, 7,159 not working people, 13,840 people working in households, 36,350 students, 236 retired people, 1,621 incapacitated people, 1,929 part-time workers and 8,951 others, making the total working population of 106,913.

Notable people from Grand Cape Mount

 * Lewis Penick Clinton, Bassa prince, and missionary

title: Grand Cape Mount County