Domestic workers are consequently excluded from labor law protections, exacerbating their exploitation
On June 16, International Domestic Workers Day, domestic workers organizations, unions, and their allies worldwide, including in India, celebrated this workforce, whether as international or internal migrant workers or as local workers.
Domestic workers (like women family members who perform unpaid care work) sustain and renew the families they work for, including their young and working members, thus making an indispensable contribution to the functioning of these families, to economies and societies.
As international and internal migrants, their expenditures contribute to the economies of host sites, and their remittances, together with the earnings of local domestic workers, support their own families and communities.
A plethora of research indicates that domestic workers’ remittances and local earnings are primarily invested in family well-being, food, housing, children’s education, and medical care, as well as small economic assets, thereby contributing to human capital, family, and community development.
But despite this, they remain the unsung, invisible heroes. Domestic work is not recognized as labor in many countries. The confinement of domestic workers to the privacy of households rather than public work sites, the perception that they do not produce tangible goods for exchange like other workers, or that they perform tasks seen as intrinsic to women’s nature...
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