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contributions and challenges of domestic workers

The massive place occupied by women in the labour force, the aging of societies, the intensification of work, as well as the frequent lack or inadequacy of policies to facilitate the reconciliation of family life and work are creating a demand for domestic workforce in many places, especially in the urban areas, and Ghana is not an exception.

Although it started as an unpaid care work predominantly undertaken by women and girls for many years, domestic work is now an economic activity which should be well respected and remunerated.

Today, paid domestic workers constitute a substantial workforce in Ghana, making important socioeconomic contributions. We cannot deny the fact that paid domestic work is necessary for socioeconomic development since in today’s socioeconomic context, societies, as well as their economic activities, cannot be sustained without counting on paid domestic activities.

Domestic work has positive consequences as economically disadvantaged girls and women get paid their work.

Although most of them have very low levels of qualification, some of them are senior high school and vocational institution leavers.

Besides individual livelihood improvement, domestic workers also enable other citizens, especially women, to contribute to economic development activities outside their households.

Moreover, their engagement indirectly helps in facilitating access to basic education – preparing children for school in the mornings when their parents have to rush to avoid traffic; hygiene – working to keep the household clean within and without; good health – taking charge of meals and other basic provisions like fetching of water; and also providing security for their employers’ properties when they  go to work.

The engagement in paid domestic work has prevented many young people from falling victim to socioeconomic vices such as stealing, drug peddling and prostitution.

Supply and demand factors are fuelling the growth of paid domestic work. On one hand, demographic changes, including an ageing population, a decline in welfare state, increasing women’s labour force participation, as well as challenges of combining working life and family life in urban areas, are increasing demands for domestic workers.

On the other hand, increasing rural poverty, gender discrimination, limited employment opportunities, among others, are fuelling constant supply of paid domestic workers.

The reasons for predominance of paid domestic work - those that create the need for the recruitment of paid domestic workers and those that cause people to seek and engage in domestic work – make the sector very crucial for socioeconomic development, whether in advanced or developing economies.

This is why we can say domestic work is serving as a backbone to our socioeconomic context today.

Unfortunately, several women and girls are actually into exploitative domestic work; which is characterised by low remuneration, absence of written contracts, isolation, violent punishments, sometimes rape, constant misdemeanor and suicide tendencies. Their situation is compounded by inadequate legal framework. These, among others, make the recognition and defence of their human rights and labour rights an urgent necessity.

The absence of accurate and comparable data on domestic workers, especially in developing countries, creates difficulties in analysing their socioeconomic contribution, as well as working conditions.

Among other things, the difficulties can be due to a high incidence of undeclared domestic work activities, under-reporting and the varying definitions of domestic work in statistical surveys.

In Ghana, even though research data on this segment of the workforce is virtually non-existent, general knowledge attest to the fact that many households employ domestic workers under different terms and conditions.

They are, however, undocumented and undeclared in most cases, just like the many workforce in the predominant informal economy.

Since the work performed by domestic workers does not take place in marketplaces, factories or offices, they are usually not considered to be an aspect of the labour market.

People, particularly women, are being hired to take charge of household cares and responsibilities (in private homes) for their economic activity, whilst those they serve engage in economic activities outside their households or in the public places.

However, unlike most of their counterparts in economic activities outside households, domestic employees face many challenges,  including gender inequality and discrimination, longer work time allocation in relation to their wages and issues relating to domestic work migrants, as well as other major decent work deficits that also touch on their social protection status.

Story: Evelyn Benjamin-Sampson

The writer is Gender/Youth Co-ordinator of   the Organisation of African Trade Union Unity ( OATUU)
Email: [email protected]

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