Global Trade in Domestic Workers Surges

As the global trade in domestic workers surges, millions of young girls face exploitation and abuse. The Washington Post reports:

The number of girls who leave their communities or even their countries to clean other people's houses, has surged in recent years, according to labor and human rights specialists. The girls in the maid trade, some as young as 5, often go unpaid, and their work in private homes means the abuses they suffer are out of public view.

The ILO, a UN agency based in Geneva, said more girls under 16 work in domestic service than in any other category of child labor. The organization said that maids are among the most exploited workers and that few nations have adequate regulations to safeguard them.

Rights groups say rural families often send their girls off to work willingly, as a way to escape poverty, not understanding the risks of abuse. And the employers are often only marginally better off. Having climbed a step or two on the economic ladder, they can afford one of the first trappings of prosperity: a girl to do the chores.

Human Rights Watch has documented nearly 150 cases of female domestic workers from Indonesia who killed themselves in recent years in Singapore, many jumping to their deaths from high-rise apartments. In Saudi Arabia, thousands of girls and women from Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Indonesia and other nations have fled abusive employers, according to the New York-based rights group.

Alejandro Toledo- from child labor to president

When he was elected president of Peru in 2001, Alejandro Toledo became the first person of mixed Latino and Indian blood in 500 years to serve as the country’s political leader. Toledo started life so poor that he sold cigarettes and shined shoes on the streets to support his family and pay for his education. Today, he has made reducing poverty and inequality his fight. Toledo in an interview:

"Child labor is something I fought against strongly when I was negotiating the free trade agreement between Peru and the United States. I [suggested] that we make a commitment [on the part of] both countries: one, to meet some labor standards established by the International Labor Organization; two, to meet some environmental standards that we now recognize; and three, to prevent child labor from going into exports. We need to reduce and eliminate child labor [through investments in human capital]—nutrition, health, education—and it should go both ways, Peru and the United States."

Some new thoughts about child labour during the Industrial Revolution

Oxford University Professor Jane Humphries offers lessons from the Industrial Revolution for child labour:

She offers an interesting new explanation for child labour based on empirical evidence:

"Child labour thus emerges as the outcome of the fragility of the male breadwinner family structure in a context where men’s support was irregular or insufficient, and a compact between children and their mothers, whereby working children surrendered their pay to their mothers who in return spent it carefully and in the interests of the family as a whole. In this way, older children helped to support their younger siblings, which was vital in an era of high fertility and large families."

Views about the development of child labour restrictions were mixed:

"Children were prevented from starting work or caught working under-age and expelled with sufficient frequency to suggest that scepticism about the effectiveness of regulation may be misplaced. Feelings about such expulsions were mixed; children in needy families were dismayed to no longer be able to contribute but grateful for the relief afforded. In some cases, autobiographers reflected that protective labour legislation saved them from impending physical collapse."
(Though this is not the purpose of her article, it would be interesting to learn why regulation of child labour began during the Industrial Revolution)

The last sentence of her article, however, necessitates some reflection:

"Where families have been broken up and denuded of prime-age adults by wars and epidemic disease, the prospects for preserving childhood look bleak."