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After looking at prior efforts to address domestic/household work, this chapter situates the making of the Domestic Workers Convention, 2011 (No. 189), “Decent Work for Domestic Workers.” Paving the way were ILO discussions on migrant labor and the informal economy. “Decent work” and “fair globalization” initiatives framed the convention, but the ILO would not have formalized household employment without national and regional social movements, the creation of the International Domestic Workers Network (IDWN) under South Africa’s Myrtle Witbooi, and its campaign for ILO attention. Domestic workers gained a presence at the ILO, despite formal institutional barriers, aided by NGO and union allies, especially Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO) and the IUF (International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations). Convention No. 189 recognized the centrality of paid care work for women’s labor force participation and the functioning of the global economy. For a new century, it boosted the ILO in a fight against the precarity and informality that were undermining the very idea of universal labor standards. Parlaying victory into better conditions would prove daunting, but IDWN (and its successor, the International Domestic Workers Federation [IDWF]) secured more ratifications in a few years than many other conventions.