Numerous initiatives have been proposed to improve the conditions of domestic workers, the vast majority of whom are women. Lacking the protection that other types of workers enjoy, they depend on the good will of their employers, and are sometimes victims of ill-treatment and arbitrariness. There is, therefore, a general consensus that it is socially convenient that their situation be improved, so that their work is adequately compensated, and that they have greater job security.
Where there is no equal consensus is as to how to achieve that goal. In its most basic expression, all these improvement initiatives involve money, and it is necessary to determine who will bear the greatest costs. Logically, they should be the people who hire them, as is usual in an employment relationship, but that clashes with the economic reality in which a vast number of these people find themselves.
In a way, domestic help acts as a mechanism for access to the labor market for the middle class. It allows people, also mostly women, to free themselves from household chores and participate in other productive activities, either taking jobs or working on their own, both full-time and part-time, without implying that with that income can pay higher wages. The variety of such tasks is very wide, and include such things as cleaning and maintenance, food preparation, and child and elder care. From that angle, the real contribution of the domestic work to GDP includes not only their own remunerations, but also those corresponding to those who have accessed the labor market thanks to it. And their remuneration is both monetary and in nature, in the form of accommodation, food and any other means of compensation, such as clothing, medicine and transportation, which makes them an informal relief valve for unemployment.
