"Preferences and Prejudices: Employers’ Views on Domestic Workers in the Republic of Yemen"

by De Regt, Marina (2009)

Abstract

In the past two decades the global demand for migrant domestic labor has dramatically increased. In areas that have experienced rapid economic growth, such as the oil‐producing countries in the Middle East and countries in East Asia, the employment of foreign women as domestics has become a common phenomenon. Even in Yemen, the least economically developed country on the Arabian Peninsula, there is a growing demand for paid domestic labor. While in most developing countries local women are employed as domestics, in Yemen it is mainly migrant women who do paid domestic work, with the majority of women coming from the Horn of Africa (Ethiopia and Somalia) and some also coming from Asia. Because of the work’s low status, Yemeni women are reluctant to take up paid domestic labor, and Yemeni employers, in fact, also prefer not to hire them.

Keywords

Immigrant Labour, Womens Work, Domestic Labour, Domestic Worker, Gender, Gendered Labour, Female Labour, Yemen, Division Of Labour, Racialised Labour

Themes

Domestic Labour, Non-Western Societies

Links to Reference

• https://doi.org/10.1086/678150

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