A domestic worker is someone who works in her/his employer’s household. This is the first peculiarity of the domestic sector: the paradoxical link between the public sphere and the private nature of work. Most of the time a domestic worker is a woman (83%), very often a migrant worker, meaning that a person left her/his home and family to work abroad. Some migrant workers work illegally, some of them work in slavery-like conditions.
16th of June is the International Domestic Workers’ Day, and 2021 marks the 10th anniversary of ILO Convention no.189 that demands member states to promote and protect the rights of domestic workers.
Whereas domestic workers significantly contribute to the global workforce and economy, their contributions continue to be undervalued and invisible. Many of them work for excessively long hours with low wages, without legal terms of employment thus being often excluded from the scope of legal and social protection. Also, some face sexual and verbal abuses.
Time For Equality has been focusing on raising the public’s awareness of decent work for domestic workers over the past years, both in Luxembourg and at international level. We have also been call on the Government of Luxembourg to accelerate the ratification of the Convention no. 189.
Find out below a selection of Time For Equality’s ressources and activities on this theme.
Check also out the new ILO report on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Convention on decent work for domestic workers, here.
Photo: © PAG-ASA, Massimo Timosi / ILO / Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO)
Time For Equality’s ressources on decent work for domestic workers:
