Tens of millions of people work in other people's homes, often uncounted
In 2015 the International Labour Organization counted about 67.1 million domestic workers worldwide, cooking, cleaning and caring for children and elderly relatives in private homes. Because so much of this work is hidden and unregistered, experts think the true figure may approach 100 million, and 83 percent are women.
Servant is the older English word, and domestic service was often simply called service, arranged in strict hierarchies in large households, where skilled staff managing complex establishments could be highly valued. For most, though, the work is demanding, poorly regarded and isolating. Live-in workers may have their own quarters, but these are usually less comfortable than the family's, sometimes a kitchen corner or a small box room. Some employers require uniforms; Peru in 2009 and Chile in 2014 banned forcing domestic workers to wear them in public.
Legal protection has lagged. Britain's Master and Servant Act of 1823 was the first law of its kind and shaped domestic service rules elsewhere, though such laws tended to favour employers. In 2011 the International Labour Organization adopted a convention on decent work for domestic workers. Brazil has required registered contracts since 2015, with minimum wage, paid holidays and a weekly day off, while in Guatemala, where about 11.8 percent of working women in 2020 were domestic workers, the law exempts their jobs from set hours.
In the United States, domestic workers are left out of many standard protections, including the National Labor Relations Act. There are about 1.8 million of them, mostly women and often immigrants, and only thirteen percent receive health insurance from employers. Advocacy groups such as the National Domestic Workers Alliance have pushed for change.
Once expected to fade with modern life, the industry has instead grown, increasingly filled by migrants moving from poorer countries to wealthier ones. Earlier generations in Britain, the United States and Canada spoke of a servant problem: middle-class families expected to keep house and entertain at a standard too demanding for one person, yet struggled to find and keep help.
Source: Domestic worker
