Silent No More: Domestic Workers Confront Violence at Work

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Domestic work lacks legal and policy protections.

The isolation of domestic labor in the private household has a dual effect: it obscures the labor component of the violence due to the pervasive non-recognition of the domestic sphere as a workplace, simultaneously obscuring the “domestic” nature of violence by alienating domestic workers as people who are not in familial relationships of domesticity with other residents of the household.

The sector is also isolated due to the high degree of personal dependence on the employer: domestic workers do not have intermediary lines of management or colleagues to provide support, nor unions within the workplace. As Sexual and Gender-Based Violence and Harassment (SGBVH) manifests differently according to the various vulnerabilities at play in contexts of domination and power, domestic workers are disproportionately affected because they reside and/or work under precarious conditions with extreme power imbalances between them and their employers.

This event brings domestic worker leaders from various localities to discuss their work against SGBVH and the prospects of having a workplace free from violence and harassment, through work on the ILO Convention C190 and other creative policy solutions.