Time to Care: Unpaid and Underpaid Care Work and the Global Inequality Crisis

Oxfam

As well as doing care work for free at home, many poor women also work providing care for others, for example as domestic workers, who are among the most exploited workers in the world. Just 10 percent of domestic workers are covered by general labor laws to the same extent as other workers, and only around half enjoy equal minimum wage protection.  More than half of all domestic workers have no limits on work hours under national law.  In the most extreme cases of forced labor and trafficking, domestic workers find themselves trapped in people’s homes with every aspect of their lives controlled, rendering them invisible and unprotected.  It is estimated that globally, the 3.4 million domestic workers in forced labor are being robbed of $8 billion every year, equating to 60%of their due wages.

Read the full report here.