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An Invisible Workforce

Women Domestic Workers: Persisting Precarity

Sohini Sengupta

From the beginning of this year, a large number of domestic workers–all women–were enrolling themselves at an office in Datta Mandir, Nashik, Maharashtra, to get pension benefits. They were told by the woman at the office that enrollment was for a state government scheme that would provide them with pension money. News spread, and over the next few months, well over 1500 women had registered at the office. Many of them had arrived from rural areas, travelling from nearby villages like Malegaon and Nandgaon, and even the neighbouring district of Dhule. The individual cost of registration was Rs 650, and the return: the promise of government benefits.

The benefits never reached them, however. As reported on 3rd August, a complaint was lodged at the Upnagar Police station after the women realised that they had been cheated–of a whopping collective sum of over Rs 9.5 lakh. The scamsters have been recently arrested.

There are many issues that this incident brings to light, such as the terrifying efficiency and pervasiveness of a fraud such as this, that was successfully conducted throughout the better part of a year, and cheated lakhs of rupees out of vulnerable women. However, the most deep-rooted concern of all, one that is bound to be overlooked even after events such as this, is the immense precarity of the welfare of domestic workers.

An estimated three to ten million people are employed as domestic workers in households across India (data source: ILO), and 80 percent of these workers are women (data source: Mitra and Damle 2019). The Domestic Workers Convention 189 of ILO, dedicated to the protection and rights of domestic workers, has been ratified by more than 20 countries; yet, India is not one of them. Domestic workers mostly depend on a handful of schemes–those too, often hard to benefit from, a few localised and state-based aid structures, and themselves: both as individuals and as collectives, through a few unions. With no centrally implemented minimum wage regulations, non-regulated working hours, and a transforming world of work where the only Central government protection women working as domestic helps receive is from the Prevention of Sexual Harassment (PoSH) at Work Act, their labour as well as their rights or wellbeing largely goes unaccounted for.

Informality and its Problems
One of the key issues that perpetuate the informal status of domestic work is the lack of regulatory frameworks that recognise and protect the workers’ rights. In many countries, domestic work is not considered “real” work, and thus, it is often excluded from labour laws that govern other sectors. In India, a handful of bills and policies were proposed for the welfare of domestic workers. However, most of these policy based actions still remain in the draft stage even years later. Bills such as the Domestic Workers (Conditions of Employment) Bill, 1959 and the Housemaids and Domestic Employees (Conditions of Service and Welfare Bill), 2004 proposed at the Parliament were not passed into law.

The only acts explicitly including ‘domestic workers’ are the Unorganised Workers (Social Security) Act (2008) and Domestic Workers Welfare & Social Security Act (2010). However, the former struggles with its definition of ‘domestic work’, and the latter, while proposing formalisation and registration of domestic workers and prohibition of employment of minors, failed to see any of this through. The proposed bodies at Central, State and District level were not made functional, and registration of domestic workers continues to be a process that includes very few and leaves out the vast majority. At present, welfare regulations for domestic workers, including minimum wages, work hours and provisions for leave are left at the discretion of State laws and schemes. In the context of India, in one of its publications, the ILO boasts of “[assisting] the Labour Ministry in drafting policy on domestic workers, … [and conducting] research on minimum wage setting practices in six states and on health insurance access in another two, to help determine where improvements are needed.” States such as Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka, Kerala, Meghalaya, Rajasthan, and Tamil Nadu have brought domestic workers under the schedule of Minimum Wages Act (1948); Maharashtra has established a Welfare Board for such workers.

Yet, organisation and regularisa-tion in any form continues to be difficult. The isolated nature of domestic work, where individuals often work alone in separate households, makes collective organising difficult. Additionally, domestic workers may face legal and social barriers to unionisation, particularly as India’s labour laws do not recognise domestic work as a formal sector, nor offer significant labour protections. The fear of losing their jobs, especially among migrant domestic workers who may lack legal status or face language barriers, further discourages them from seeking collective representation.

The concept of domestic work has evolved significantly over time, presenting challenges in regularising domestic workers, recognising their labour, and enabling labourers to become organised. Historically, domestic work has been viewed as an extension of household responsibilities, often performed by women within the family and later by hired help, typically women from marginalised or lower-income backgrounds. This perception has led to domestic work being undervalued, both socially and economically, making it difficult to integrate domestic workers into formal labour frameworks. In the eyes of the State, domestic work is more often than not beyond the scope of its activities, being deployed in a ‘private’ space. Perceived in an informal logic of work across times, formalisation of domestic work is a challenge. Let us take a look at the definition offered in the Domestic Workers Welfare and Social Security Act (2010):

“Domestic Worker” means, a person who is employed for remuneration whether in cash or kind, in any household ‘or similar Establishments’ through any agency or directly, either on a temporary or contract basis or permanent, part time or full time to do the household or allied work and includes a “Replacement worker” who is working as a replacement for the main workers for a short and specific period of time as agreed with the main worker.

Explanation: household and allied work includes but is not limited to activities such as cooking or a part of it, washing clothes or utensils, cleaning or dusting of the house, driving, caring/nursing of the children/sick/old/mentally challenged or disabled persons.

The complexity and multilayered nature of the definition is quite evident, and yet it fails to capture in any detailed extent the variety of work domestic workers do, and the culturally specific variations involved, which leads to the “but is not limited to” being a necessary addition. How, then, can policies be expected to be executed–let alone work effectively–when legal structures cannot completely capture the spectrum of work domestic workers are engaged in?

At the same time, in spite of requiring a range of skills–which even the legal definitions cannot adequately capture–from caregiving and child-rearing to cooking, cleaning, and managing household tasks, domestic work is often perceived as unskilled labour. This perception has contributed to the marginalisation of domestic workers and the undervaluation of their contributions to the economy and society. Furthermore, domestic work is typically performed in private homes, making it invisible to the public and difficult to monitor. This invisibility reinforces the notion that domestic work is less valuable than other forms of employment, perpetuating a cycle of exploitation and lack of recognition.

The challenge to create provisions for domestic workers at the policy level is therefore two-pronged–first, a lack of data, and second, incoherent policy action. Given the informal nature of employment of domestic labour, there is no systematised registration system for domestic workers across the country, thus making it impossible to acquire a proper estimate of numbers or even create a proper survey. Most domestic workers are hired through informal arrangements, often without contracts, fixed working hours, or clear terms of employment. This informality is also what makes it difficult for governments to enforce labour laws and regulations that protect domestic workers, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. The lack of legal recognition and standardisation in employment terms also complicates efforts to ensure that domestic workers receive fair wages, social security benefits, and other labour protections. In summary, the informality of domestic work and the absence of regulatory and protective legal framework form a vicious cycle, where each feeds the existent state of the other.

It is also worth mentioning here that over the years, the impulse of registration facilitated by state forces has largely been driven by suspicions of criminal activities of domestic workers. In West Bengal in 2015, the police force insisted that registering the names, identifying papers and photos of domestic helps was paramount to maintaining the safety of households, after two incidents of theft and murder by female domestic workers were investigated. However, this procedure (which wasn’t really followed by the residents) did not serve to protect domestic workers–it was meant to protect employers from them. If anything, such a measure only served to heighten the stigma of criminality against domestic workers. It has been observed, in fact, that even when domestic workers secure regular payment of wages, they are often faced with allegations and false complaints of theft and cheating. Domestic workers are eager to get themselves registered: not to the police, of course, but to the Labour Ministry, as formalised workers who can receive government benefits. But no accommodation or assistance comes from that end.

The gendered nature of domestic work also means that the large majority of female domestic workers are left at the risk of workplace violence, abuse and sexual harassment. The findings from a survey conducted on sexual harassment in 2018, among 291 domestic workers in South Delhi showed that 92% of respondents witnessed and recognised different kinds of ongoing sexual harassment around them–including stalking, lewd gestures and comments loaded with sexual innuendos. Of course, the fear of losing employment, or stigmatisation which can affect future employment prospects, and absence of general systems of support meant that most of these cases go unreported, and the true scale of harassment faced by these women cannot be fathomed.

Domestic Work and the Pandemic
A significant milestone that pushed the position of female domestic workers even further back was the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic caused a major shutdown of existing systems, and also led to a transformation in the nature and extent of domestic work itself. With families staying at home, the demand for domestic work increased, but this did not necessarily translate into better wages or working conditions. On the contrary, domestic workers were often expected to take on additional tasks, such as caring for children who were home from school or cooking for entire families. Despite the increased workload, many domestic workers faced pay cuts, delays in payments, or were asked to accomplish the previous bulk of labour within reduced hours, further devaluing their labour. Domestic work, already undervalued and mostly informal, became even more precarious during the pandemic. As households faced lockdowns and economic uncertainty, many employers reduced or stopped paying domestic workers, fearing the spread of the virus. This sudden loss of income left millions of domestic workers in a vulnerable position, unable to access basic necessities. During the pandemic, many domestic workers were left without access to healthcare, unemployment benefits, or any form of financial aid, exacerbating their already precarious situation. In other scenarios, where domestic workers were migrant women, the situation was even more precarious. While some women, when fired from work, discovered that they had no way to leave home. Others, who served as live-in workers, were locked in with their employers, leaving them at risk of exploitation, lack of sanctuary conditions, even sexual harassment.

Wages for these domestic workers plummeted, often also due to being withheld by employers. An article by Pragathi Ravi cites a survey that brought this to light:

‘‘Nearly 60% of the 795 domestic workers interviewed in December 2020-January 2021 said that their employers did not pay them during the lockdown, as per a survey conducted by Initiative for What Works to Advance Women and Girls in the Economy, a not-for-profit research centre. The survey... found that 16% of domestic workers received partial wages and 12% were fired. ... [In a June 2020 study] about 87% of the 2,396 workers were told not to come to work once the lockdown was announced in March 2020. They were not sure if and when they would be called to work again. Further, 91% (2,180 workers) lost their April 2020 salaries. Of the 396 workers surveyed in the Bruhat Bangalore Gruhakar-mikara Sangha areas, 86% (341) lost their jobs. Overall, nearly 50% of domestic workers over the age of 50 were fired’.

The article further shows that many workers, who previously worked at five to six households, were fired from a majority of them, causing their earnings to drop to around one-tenth of the previous sum. In a multicity study, 57% respondents complained of being projected as virus carriers and hence stigmatised. During the pandemic, the absence of formal registration with social security boards robbed female domestic workers of all government relief, with 51 percent having difficulty buying essential food items and 36 percent having difficulty with health care access, according to a 2020 study by Institute of Social Study Trust.

The Intimate Other
A study by Mohan et al. shows a range of changes that had crept up in the female domestic worker’s world of work by the time the COVID-19 pandemic had receded. The employment numbers bounced back by a certain margin. However, the number of full-time workers increased quite sharply. Further, a number of women who did not engage in paid domestic work earlier now secured at least part-time employment. At the same time, many women who were fired from a number of houses were not called back to those households, nor did they find any assistance or support from them. Further, responsibilities of cooking, cleaning, washing and taking care of infants increased. The final of these trends could be because a) the domestic workers were desperate to make up for their economic losses during the pandemic, and took on an increased load, and b) the scenario post-pandemic demanded more domestic aid: this could be because the work-from-home trends that continued beyond the pandemic fused longer work hours into domestic life, and because post-COVID complications demanded more care work and assistance. As for the rest of the trends, it is better to attempt to understand them through the female domestic worker’s position between ‘house’ and ‘home’. This position is to be analysed twofold, first through the female domestic worker’s position in her own household, and also through her position in the household(s) she is employed in.

In an article titled “Overlooked Realities”, Thakkar and Smiley argue that women domestic workers perceive ‘house’ and their ‘home’ differently. Thakkar and Smiley further write that for these domestic workers, “their homes are perceived as warzones, reinforcing patriarchy through incidents of domestic violence and gendered subordination”. This analysis brings us to the rise in full-time employment and uninitiated women joining the workforce post-pandemic. For female domestic workers, there is always a sharp division between their work and their life and how they perceive it. They often struggle to negotiate between their roles of breadwinner in the ‘house’ and wife in the ‘home’. A very large number of women are subjected to domestic violence at home, and all of them are subjected to deeply patriarchal norms. A statement recorded by Thakkar in a separate study is as follows: “He would beat me for money after he lost his job. I felt vulnerable and unsafe (weeps). So, I soon stepped out and took the job of jhadoo, pocha aur bartan (cleaning homes and washing dishes). I work as a part-time paid domestic worker now.” For this respondent, part-time domestic work is an exit route–it is a way to remove herself from the clutches of her violent husband, and thereby remove herself to a ‘house’ where she is safe from the violence of her ‘home’. Before one leans into romanticising such a situation, it must also be stressed that for many women–just as it is with the above respondent–increased work hours or newly accepted services were not simply a bid for freedom, but also fundamentally a desperate situation which forces the role of breadwinner on them, whether because of their the unemployment or reduced wages of other members of their family. Nevertheless, it is important to perceive the difficulties of women domestic workers’ position between their home and workplace–both of which are lined with their own violent and/or exploitative codes, and the counter mechanisms they adopt to assert their agency and to seek a better social reality. This is studied in detail in Thakkar’s article.

The other side of the coin is the question of where the female domestic worker stands within her workplace. In truth the female domestic worker faces a double-layered separation–the first, in the perception of her labour, and the second, in the perception of her subjectivity. As discussed earlier, historically, the labour of the domestic help as a figure lies in the gap between the housewife’s unpaid work and external (more formalised) care work. With the shadow of traditional housework falling over paid domestic work, the larger social perception ends up feminising and trivialising this labour, adding to the persistence of its informal nature and distancing it from the social benefits and securities of other sectors of work.

At the same time, paid domestic workers are very distinctly considered an outsider to the household that they work in, in ways more than one. One fundamental cause of this is the belief system of purity and pollution, and the stigma of insanitation and dirt against domestic workers. In a large number of households, domestic workers are not allowed to touch objects used by the employers–they have to eat or drink from separate bottles and utensils, their towels or washcloths are kept separately, and anything they may intentionally or inadvertently touch is considered dirty. The reader may also remember the stigma of criminality and disease-carriers that domestic workers face, mentioned earlier in this essay. The workplace reality of domestic workers is one where they are most intimately a part of the household, in several cases being the ones that actually keep the domestic space functional, and yet they are certainly not considered an active figure to be included in this domesticity. The resultant gap drives in a condition where domestic workers find themselves working silently in the background, pointedly ignored at all times unless they are spoken to: after which two-liner conversation they are promptly returned to being perceived as no different from a piece or furniture or a vacuum cleaner. This is a de-subjectification of the domestic worker, who spends the larger part of the day in these exact circumstances. Otso Harju rightly comments, the domestic worker “combines – and bears the brunt of – all forms of classist inequality.” “The case of the domestic worker becomes a kind of synthesis par excellence: it is [commercial workspace] and home, paid and unpaid, economic and symbolic all at once. The place that produces leisure, privacy and home for one produces capitalist exploitation, feudal servitude and symbolic alienation for the other.” The domestic worker therefore becomes the Intimate Other in the households they are employed in: invisible, de-subjectified, the well oil machine of the house that must not be perceived, and always considered dirty and lowly, always on the brunt of suspicion, threat and exploitation.

On Making Visible
Towards the end, one naturally is driven to think through the possibilities of solving this conundrum. What mechanisms can grant domestic workers the recognition and dignity of their labour? What measures can protect them from violence and other workplace harassment? In the end, the fundamental gap is that of recognition itself: recognition by the state of the labour and rights of these workers, recognition by the households of their contributions, integrity, and humanity. Even in evolving cultures of domesticity, where the traditionally large number of family members are no longer present–such as single working women, bachelors or nuclear families–domestic workers are perceived as necessary (particularly due to work life pressure or inability to handle these activities by oneself), and a culture of servitude continues.

In the face of this persistent blindness, one ‘success’ story is of Baby Halder. Halder left behind a domestic life fraught with violence, and took up work as a domestic worker. At one of the households she was employed in, she found a mentor and intellectual guide in her employer. She went on to write a memoir, Alo Andhari (2002), a book that caused ripples in the society. It was translated into English as A Life Less Ordinary (Penguin, 2006), and soon Baby found an international stage to share her words and her narrative. As a writer, she has travelled to New York, Paris, and Germany, and connected with other marginalised communities, particularly women. Her work has been translated into over 20 languages. Halder’s autobiography has emerged as a significant piece of literature in the study of domestic workers’ lives, and Halder has found fame as somewhat of a universal representative for her occupation. However, Halder’s case is a one-in-a-million story, where her affinity towards books was encouraged and supported by her employer, Dr Prabodh Srivastava. Besides, one risks romanticisation and fetishisation when one perceives her work as stand-in for universal experiences: in fact, as Astha Bamba writes, “A central question surrounding her work has been–whose experience becomes the basis of our knowledge?

Nevertheless, Baby Halder comes at the end of this essay not as a universal stand-in but as a method. In a social reality where data on domestic workers is incomplete, domestic workers’ welfare bills do not pass as acts and pension or support schemes never reach the workers, where workplace harassment is rampant, rape common, and fear of unemployment and stigmatisa-tion far too acute, policy measures and activism must rely on narratives and testaments as their backbone. Where numbers fail, the voice of the female domestic workers can only be heard when someone truly listens–through literature, through testimonials. Perhaps through the veil of fiction, but even fiction has a testimonial which it hides in its core. ooo

References:
[1]    “Women Domestic Workers Cheated Under Garb of Pension Scheme,” ‘Nashik News’, The Times of India, August 3, 2024.
[2]    Domestic Workers in India: An Invisible Workforce, by Neymat Chadha. Issue Brief, Social and Political Research Foundation, 2020.
[3]    “Poverty, debt, hunger: How India’s Covid-19 lockdown hurt its domestic workers”, by Pragathi Ravi, Scroll.in, September 12, 2021.
[4]    “How Covid 19 Affected the Work Prospects and Healthcare Seeking of Women Domestic Workers in Kolkata City, India? A Longitudinal Study”, by Shibaji Gupta, Debasis Das, Salil K. Bhattacharya and Sharmistha S. Gupta, Indian Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 2022.
[5]    “Gauging the Impact of a Pandemic on the Lives and Livelihoods of Female Domestic Worker Across Indian Cities”, by Deepanshu Mohan, Richa Sekhani, Advaita Singh, Vanshika Mittal, Jignesh Mistry, Sunanda Mishra, and Shivani Agarwal. International Journal of Health Sciences, 2022.
[6]    “Exploitation, Harassment and Violence: Lived Experiences of Women Paid Domestic Workers in India”, by Shriya Thakkar, Journal of South Asian Development, 2023.
[7]    “Women and maids: Perceptions of domestic workers, housework and class among young, progressive, middle- to upper-class women in Delhi”, by Otso Harju, Master’s Thesis, Lund University, 2017.
[8]    “Domestic workers Welfare and Social Security Act 2010”, National Commission for Women.
[9]    “Female Migrant Workers and Domestic Employees Need a Security Net”, by Rohini Mitra and Aarohi Damle, The Wire, 2019.
[10]   “Overlooked Realities: Reimagining “Home” and “House” Among Women Domestic Workers in India”, by Shriya Thakkar and Kevin T. Smiley, Violence Against Women, 2024.
[11]        “In Conversation with Baby Halder”, by Astha Bamba, The Third Eye, 2023.

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Vol 57, No. 15 - 18, Oct 5 - Nov 2, 2024