During the colonial era, the use of indigenous, and later Afro-descendant, women for domestic servitude, survived into modernity in the form of socially discriminated and scorned domestic employment.
Until the end of the 20th century, most of the countries in the region legally discriminated against domestic workers, helping many of the ideas, oppressions, and prejudices of another era to continue to this day.
In general, the justifications for assigning fewer rights to domestic workers compared to other forms of employment were based on three central justifications:
01
That domestic work should be considered a special form of occupation since employers do not generate profits based on the work of the people they employ.
02
That domestic employment was a kind of favor done to women without specific qualifications, by a supposedly generous person who provided a place to live and food.
03
The difficulty of those who employ domestic workers to pay wages similar to any other type of employment.
From the beginning of the 21st century, most of the Spanish-speaking countries in the region began to equate the labor rights of Domestic Workers with other types of work. These advances were argued in the questioning of the very concept of work and the incorporation of the gender perspective in the economy.
Thanks to the alliances built between feminists in the various spaces for international debate, global and regional agreements were promoted that incorporated instruments for the practical application of conceptual changes.
In 1995, from the Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing, the value of household and care work was established, as well as the importance of quantifying and registering it with time use surveys and the implementation of satellite accounts of unpaid work in the home and care. Since then, and especially in the following decade, regional and international agreements and instruments have incorporated provisions that commit States to recognize full rights for domestic employment.
Most of the countries in the region have approved the legal equality of domestic employment and ratified Convention 189. Despite this, inequalities persist and the debate has begun to focus on how to achieve the full exercise of the acquired rights.
"The first to oppose are the employers, they always see domestic workers as inferior, they don't know that with our work we contribute a lot to the country's economy and we help many of them get ahead, without us they couldn't go to work either, our employers could not develop themselves in their own jobs either, and we are also like teachers because we teach their children when they are not at home”
—Leader from Peru.
Organized workers identify employers, parliamentarians, powerful sectors of society and, in several of the countries, business groups as the main actors in stopping the closing of this gap. Since stereotypes, discrimination, and non-recognition of the social value of this work and its contribution to the economy of nations persist.
Although workplaces are typically considered to be in the public sphere, domestic workers carry out their work within a “private” sphere, which creates a series of difficulties for access and monitoring of their working conditions.
Working conditions that leave little free time and resources make it difficult to interact with other workers due to the space and solitude in which the tasks are carried out. In addition, many of the women who carry out these jobs face difficulties to access higher levels of education, which prevents them from knowing their rights. All these factors isolate domestic workers and hinder their political organization.
In several of the countries, joint roundtables are being created to work on closing this gap. In several, the creation of tripartite spaces, workers, the state, and employers is the goal. The difficulty for this to happen lies in the absence, in most countries, of an organized employer counterpart that adequately represents their position.
Knowing and being trained on the rights of Domestic Workers is the first step to exercise them, claim them and identify possible violations.
Collective action and alliances are key to progress, they allow for exchanging progress and setbacks, creating knowledge. Participation strengthens the organizations of domestic workers as a social subject to influence public policies. On the other hand, the struggles of women workers should not be isolated from those of other excluded women, such as indigenous and Afro-descendant women, it is essential to support and strengthen these articulations. The growth and ties that the organizations create will help expand knowledge of the rights obtained to women who are further away from the centers of information and political action in the countries.
Mutual support, the solidarity of the feminist and women's movement, of the National Mechanisms and of key sectors, is essential, as domestic workers are affected by multiple and intersecting structural vulnerabilities and their involvement in the struggle for rights makes them vulnerable to loss of their sources of income. Therefore, an important challenge is the generation of mechanisms that provide the economic capacities to resist in the event of a possible abuse or breach of rights, the ability to survive not having a job.
In addition, historical discrimination means that working women who have worked all their lives as domestic employees, even though their right to social security is recognized today, do not have the possibility of retirement. Therefore, it is important to put pressure on organizations to establish transitional or compensatory measures.