Legal coverage for domestic workers

From the standpoint of inclusion of domestic work in labour law, ILO estimates indicate that in 2010 only 10 per cent of the world’s domestic workers, approximately 6.7 million in 2013, are covered by general labour laws to the same extent as other workers. This situation reveals the large gaps in terms of the legal exclusion that domestic workers face.

According to information from 163 countries 1 collected for this report, at least 70 (43 per cent) have provisions that provide some sort of social protection to domestic workers. This means that the laws of those countries provide legal protection in at least one of the nine branches of social security set forth in the Social Security (Minimum Standards) Convention, 1952 (No. 102). This figure basically includes contributory transfers but in some cases also refers to non-contributory benefits, such as health insurance in Brazil and the United Kingdom, or family benefits in Argentina. Table lists the countries, classified by regions, which have enacted some provision for social security coverage of domestic workers.

According to the World Bank classification by income level, of the 70 countries identified as having some type of legal coverage for domestic workers, 31 are high-income countries, 22 are high middle-income, 14 are low middle-income and three are low-income countries. Note that not all countries listed in Table 2 are developed nations, which demonstrates that it is possible to extend legal coverage to the domestic work sector even in low middle-income and low income countries, such as Mali, Senegal and Vietnam.

The lack of affordability, defined in terms of the capacity to contribute to social security programmes, oftentimes is used to justify the exclusion from coverage of certain groups, such as frequently occurs with domestic workers. In this context, it should be recalled that accessibility largely depends on the willingness of a society to finance social transfers to different groups through a combination of several sources. The extension of effective coverage is largely determined by political will, although this is not enough; it also requires a certain capacity to guarantee financing.

Figure shows that all countries of North America and Western Europe provide some type of social protection to domestic workers, a practice largely explained by the level of development of their social protection systems.

Percentage of countries with social security coverage for domestic work, by region (168 countries in total)

Source: Department of Social Protection ILO database housework. 

Note: The number of countries included in each region corresponds to only those for which you can verify whether or not coverage; therefore, countries with insufficient information not considered in the calculations.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, approximately 60 per cent of countries (31) have established some type of social security coverage for domestic workers; in Africa it is 25 per cent; and in the Middle East and the Asia and Pacific region, a fifth of the countries provide coverage. In Central and Eastern Europe, approximately 45 per cent of domestic workers are excluded from national labour laws (in 2010). Thus, it can be concluded that developing regions face greater challenges in terms of legal coverage deficits, not only due to the reduced number of countries that provide such coverage for domestic workers, but also because those regions have a higher concentration of domestic workers than the world average, particularly Asia and Latin America (ILO, 2015a). This underscores the need to step up efforts to guarantee domestic workers’ rights to social protection in the regions with the largest gaps. To this end, the development of information on country experiences in the design and implementation of social security schemes for domestic workers is important.