My Take | We all pay a price for this slavish system

"Survey reveals abuse of foreign maids."

Wow, that's news! I am sure working as an ethnic-minority servant in Hong Kong is no bed of roses. However, it probably beats working in many Middle Eastern and Asian countries.

The survey of more than 3,000 women by a migrant workers' NGO found 58 per cent of maids have experienced verbal abuse, 18 per cent physical abuse and 6 per cent sexual abuse. Welfare activists claim the real figures are much higher.

It's ultimately irrelevant whether Hong Kong bosses are nice or exploitative and whether the maids are exploited victims.

The whole system is regressive, and has a corrosive effect on local parenting, family and society. It ensures the government and companies don't need to devise more enlightened policies on daycare, kindergartens and childhood services or promote maternity and paternity leave.

There is something fundamentally wrong about keeping more than 300,000 foreign-born women as a permanent underclass in self-styled modern and progressive Hong Kong. If nothing else, it teaches our children there are different classes of people.