Compean, 58, quit and took up full-time work as an office janitor. Last year, she helped lead a strike by 5,300 newly unionized Houston janitors, mostly immigrant women, who won better wages and working conditions.

"Now, if any problem comes up, I can deal with it," said Compean, who came from Mexico 27 years ago. "But it would be very hard to organize domestic workers. People who work in the private houses are scared to even talk."

Hiring household help is no longer reserved for the rich. Many middle-class families now feel they can afford to tap the vast pool of immigrants willing to work for modest wages, and many career women rely on a housekeeper to do chores for which they no longer have the time or energy.

Many of the women filling the jobs are single mothers, supporting children they brought with them to the United States or left behind in their homeland. Those who work as nannies often devote more time to their employers' children than to their own.

Activists in Houston, just beginning efforts to assist domestic workers, face daunting challenges. Texas is considered relatively inhospitable to labor organizing, and there are no efficient ways to communicate with housekeepers and nannies scattered in homes across the sprawling city.

"The women who live in have the worst stories to tell, but they're the hardest to reach, working in those big houses all day," said Annica Gorham of Houston's Interfaith Worker Justice Center. "We need to spend time in the neighborhood, talk to them when they're out with the kids or walking the dogs."

Activists say some of the women were brought to the United States by traffickers and become virtual indentured servants, receiving room and board but little or no pay. Employers sometimes confiscate a maid's identity papers to maximize leverage over her.

Gorham's organization has launched a pilot program encouraging domestic workers to develop new skills so they could eventually consider different jobs.

For many newly arriving women, career choices are grimly limited, according to Louise Zwick, who with her husband runs Casa Juan Diego, a refuge for illegal immigrants. Often, she said, the options are a low-paying household job or work as a hostess at a bar — a step which frequently leads to prostitution.

"You make a lot more money in the cantinas, but you ruin your life, you get AIDS," Zwick said.

Some newcomers sign up with employment agencies, which assign temporary housekeeping jobs. But immigrants'-rights activist Maria Jimenez said some of these agencies routinely take a larger-than-promised share of the wages.

Still, at Jimenez' headquarters — the Central American Resource Center — several staff members offered upbeat anecdotes of housekeepers who'd been treated well.