Middle-class Women and Domestic Work in India and the United States: Caste, Race and Patriarchy

This study compares middle-class women’s experience of domestic work in India and the United States(US), highlighting similarities in how domestic work is organised in its paid and unpaid forms across both sites. The focus on middle-class women’s experience as unpaid workers and employers of domestic workers provides an insight into how the social and economic values of domestic work are determined. Despite social and political differences, the political economies of India and the US and interlocking systems of oppression including patriarchy, neoliberalism, caste and race have produced similarities in the undervaluation of domestic work at both sites.

Child Domestic Work, Violence, and Health Outcomes: A Rapid Systematic Review

This rapid systematic review describes violence and health outcomes among child domestic workers (CDWs) taken from 17 studies conducted in low- and middle-income countries. Our analysis estimated the median reported rates of violence in CDWs aged 5–17-year-olds to be 56.2% (emotional; range: 13–92%), 18.9% (physical; range: 1.7–71.4%), and 2.2% (sexual; range: 0–62%). Both boys and girls reported emotional abuse and sexual violence with emotional abuse being the most common. In Ethiopia and India, violence was associated with severe physical injuries and sexual insecurity among a third to half of CDWs. CDWs in India and Togo reported lower levels of psycho-social well-being than controls. In India, physical punishment was correlated with poor psycho-social well-being of CDWs [OR: 3.6; 95% CI: 3.2–4; p < 0.0001]. Across the studies, between 7% and 68% of CDWs reported work-related illness and injuries, and one third to half had received no medical treatment. On average, children worked between 9 and 15 h per day with no rest days. Findings highlight that many CDWs are exposed to abuse and other health hazards but that conditions vary substantially by context. Because of the often-hidden nature of child domestic work, future initiatives will need to be specifically designed to reach children in private households. Young workers will also benefit from strategies to change social norms around the value and vulnerability of children in domestic work and the long-term implications of harm during childhood.

Migration and the Gender Impact of Covid-19 on Nepalese Women

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted lives globally, and many have been “stranded” overseas with little if any support in getting home. The stranded include migrant workers whose remittances bolster their household income and home country’s national GDP, and who are often overlooked in COVID-19 responses. This paper focuses on Nepalese women employed in the domestic work sector but last on repatriation flight lists and returnee policies and programmes. The pandemic has made an already precarious working life even more difficult. The study focuses on how women employed in Lebanon in in normal times have been able to exercise their agency in a complex socio‑political environment and how this has been disrupted by COVID-19 and the hostile political and social environment, both at home and abroad. This research is based on literature, contemporary newspaper reports, and key informants’ interviews with people working on migration issues in Nepal.

Mapping Evidence of the Power Relations Between Domestic Workers and Their Employers in Sub-Saharan Africa: a Scoping Review Protocol

Background Across various intersectional lines, including race, class and gender, domestic work is profoundly exploitative than other comparable occupations. The private household, within which domestic workers (DWs) work and function, provides for a space of complex and nuanced dynamics of power. According to the International Labour Organization there are more than 65 million DWs in the world, and Africa is the third largest employer of DWs, with more than 5.2 million DWs reported. The inception of the Domestic Workers Convention (No. 189) (C189) in 2011 sought to protect DWs from all forms of exploitation and discrimination in the workplace, the convention brought global attention to the violation of their human rights and inequalities within the domestic work sector. Although there are more than 5.2 million DWs in Africa, 39/46 countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have not ratified this convention. Due to the extremely low ratification of the C189 and scanty evidence on the power relations between DWs and their employers in SSA, this scoping review is relevant to detect the extent and characteristics of domestic work in SSA since the introduction of C189 in September 2011. Methods The literature that will be included in this scoping review are published peer-reviewed articles, grey literature from relevant departmental websites, humanitarian organisations and theses. Electronic searches of databases and search engines such as Google, Google Scholar, EBSCOhost, EBSCO Discovery Service, Scopus, World Bank and International Labour Organization (ILO) for literature published between September 2011-2021. Other search engines will include screening citations and references of appearing literature within the stipulated time period. All retrieved literature will be exported to an Endnote X9 library. Duplicate documents will be deleted prior to commencement of title screening. An adapted Mixed Method Appraisal Tool (MMAT), developed in a Google form, will be used by two reviewers to quality assess and describe all included studies (qualitative, mixed methods and quantitative). Discussion We anticipate mapping relevant literature on the power relations between domestic workers and their employers in sub-Saharan Africa. Once analysis and summary is finalised, the data will be useful to guide future research.

Gender Norms and Gender Inequality in Unpaid Domestic Work among Malay Couples in Malaysia

This article explores how gender norms rooted in culture and religion influence gender inequality among Malay couples in Malaysia. Studies on the unbalanced division of unpaid domestic work are pivotal because they negatively affect women’s economic status, well-being and life. Many studies have indicated that gender inequality in the division of household labour persists even after accounting for paid work time and resources, suggesting that gender norms lead to the unequal division in unpaid domestic work. By using gender perspective as the theoretical perspective, this study explores how men and women behave according to cultural and religious defined gender roles and are expected to behave as such. In this qualitative study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine Malay couples in Malaysia. The study suggests that women shoulder a disproportionate amount of housework and childcare due to the cultural and religious gender norms that foster the prescribed roles, emphasising men’s role as the primary breadwinners and women’s role as the homemakers. This study highlights that gender norms rooted in culture and religion plays vital roles in creating gender inequality among Malay couples. Moreover, this study adds support to the gender perspective that not only gender role ideology matter, but also highlights that religiosity matters when accounting for gender norms in Malay society. This study implies that recognising the importance of cultural and religious gender norms around domestic work as women’s work is crucial in narrowing the gender gap in unpaid domestic work.

Migration and Dynamics in Men’s and Women’s Domestic Work

International migration of couples is rising. Still, there is little evidence on men’s and women’s domestic work hours before and after migration. This is despite the fact that domestic work provides deep insights into family life and, for migrants, is directly linked to integration. Therefore, this study examines how immigrant men and women change their domestic work hours following migration, using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Our results show that domestic work hours increase for both genders after immigration. However, men are more responsible for running errands than women in the first years after migration. In the long term, the gender gaps return to the pre-migration state, with women shouldering a greater load than men. Accordingly, this study shows that migration only has a short-term impact on couples’ division of domestic work.

Increase of Urban Women’s Work Participation and Quality of Employment in Paid-Domestic Work: A Survey in Delhi-NCR and Kolkata-Asansol

A rise in female work participation in the urban sector creates a vacancy for care work at the household level and triggers a second round of job creation for females. In order to explore whether this process gives rise to decent employment for the female domestic workers (FDWs), a primary survey was conducted among domestic workers in the cities of Delhi, Noida, Kolkata and Asansol. The workers surveyed are, by and large, in low-wage, precarious employment, without social security and have an exhausting routine of work inside and outside the home. Apart from the lack of job security, sickness and disease also add to the uncertainty. Given the double burden of income-earning work and own domestic work, the FDW is crucially dependent on her health and strength, and often incurs health-related expenditure. But they contribute to their household income and have some autonomy in household decision-making. The informal working conditions for these workers, the need for social security and their low wage levels are all areas that need serious attention from policy-makers. Health insurance and pension plans would benefit the domestic workers, given that their work involves a requirement for robust health and the strength that youth brings with it.

An Empirical Study on Women Representation in Parliament of South Asian Nations

Women have been discriminated in every sphere of life. In South Asia, women constitute roughly half of the population, yet they are rarely seen in parliament or as ministers. It is true that in all sphere of political leadership women are severely underrepresented or in other words, men greatly outnumber women in every sphere of decision making even in parliament also. Women need the power to break up the trap of confinement that engage them busy in domestic work and put many restrictions on them in this patriarchal society. Lack of opportunity and low representation in the political sphere deprives women of being politically empowered. This paper is an attempt to examine the study the women representation in the lower house of parliament and as well as to compare this with the average data of women members in the lower house of Asia and World.