The number of domestic workers has grown significantly in the past 15 years to more than 52 million, the International Labour Organisation said in a report yesterday.
“From caring for children, to caring for elderly and persons with disabilities, to performing a wide range of household tasks, domestic workers are an indispensable part of the social fabric,” Sandra Polaski, ILO’s deputy director-general, told AFP during the unveiling of the study yesterday.
Malte Luebker, a senior specialist at the ILO’s regional office in the Asia and the Pacific region, said: “Domestic workers create value for the economy by allowing more workers, often with valuable skills, to leave the house and take up paid work.”
The study, based on 117 countries and territories, estimated 52.6 million domestic workers worldwide, a group equivalent to the entire working population of Vietnam, and more than four out of five of them are women.
“And the demand for domestic care workers will only grow in the future as societies age,” Polaski said.
South and Central America are the regions that have seen the steepest hike in the number of domestic workers over the 15-year period, jumping from 10.4 million in 1995 to 19.6 million in 2010.
The report said the surge was in large part linked to the rising number of women entering the workforce in a region often lacking other options for child and elderly care.
However, the highest concentration of domestic workers was found in the Asia-Pacific region, despite lagging behind the rest of the world in terms of rights and conditions such as working time, minimum wages and maternity protection.
Only domestic workers in the Middle East (many of whom are migrants from Asia) have weaker legal entitlements.
The study found about 41 percent — 21.5 million — of the world’s domestic workers in the region that included Bangladesh.
Within Asia, the greatest numbers of domestic workers are found in India (4.2 million), Indonesia (2.4 million) and the Philippines (1.9 million).
Furthermore, one in 13, around 7.8 percent, of all women with a waged job in the region in 2010 was domestic workers.
Only 3 percent of Asia’s domestic workers are entitled to a weekly day of rest, whereas globally more than half of the domestic workers have this right.
Additionally, only one per cent of domestic workers in Asia-Pacific have statutory limits to their normal maximum weekly working hours; by contrast, more than three-quarters of their counterparts in Latin America enjoy such protection.
Just 12 percent of domestic workers in Asia-Pacific are covered by statutory minimum wage legislation; worst only by the Middle East.
In all other regions of the world more than six out of seven domestic workers can expect to be paid at least the minimum wage.
For maternity leave and maternity cash benefits, 76 per cent of Asia Pacific’s domestic workers have no entitlement.
By contrast, in Latin America all such workers qualify for maternity leave and a large majority for related benefits.
“Excluding domestic workers from basic labour protection reflects an out-dated view that domestic work is somehow not real work. Domestic workers clearly deserve a better deal,” said Luebkar.
“Combined with the lack of rights, the extreme dependency on an employer and the isolated and unprotected nature of domestic work can render them vulnerable to exploitation and abuse,” Polaski pointed out.
The UN agency, however, stressed that its tally probably underestimated the real numbers, while pointing out the exclusion of some 7.4 million child domestic workers under the age of 15.
It acknowledged that the real number of domestic workers in the world could be closer to 100 million, since such work often goes unreported.
The report’s publication follows the adoption of a new ILO Convention and Recommendation on domestic work in June 2011.
These new international standards aim to ensure decent working conditions and pay for domestic workers worldwide.
Three countries — Mauritius, the Philippines and Uruguay — have already ratified the Domestic Workers Convention, 2011 (No. 189), which is due to enter into force in September 2013, while others have begun the process.
“The Convention sets a new global benchmark which countries can use to assess their own legislation,” said Yoshiteru Uramoto, ILO’s regional director for Asia-Pacific.
“It’s very encouraging that some Asian countries, such as Thailand, the Philippines and Singapore, are moving in the right direction with labour reforms. But this report makes it clear that more action is needed, by more countries.”
-With The Daily Star input
