Female Domestic Workers. New Challenges Raised by the ILO Convention

Abstract

This article analyses the 189 ILO Convention on domestic workers from a feminist and legal point of view. The ILO Convention opens with the recognition of domestic work as a labour activity. This statement represents a step forward for the acknowledgment of the domestic work’s contribution to society and the global economy, moreover when it still being a highly feminized and socially devalued activity. The ILO Convention also allocates a set of labour and social rights like wages, rest periods, conditions of health and safety, freedom of association, among others. The incorporation of a minimum working conditions may represent relevant challenges for the member states, since its domestics labour laws are characterized for the inequality regime in labour conditions or even the absence of any legislation on domestic work. The article also goes on the impact that international migration have had on domestic work, by pointing out the framework of the globalization of care in a highly unequal relationship between north and south. The article highlights the absence of a migration perspective of the ILO Convention.