The Plight of Domestic Workers in Pakistan

By Kabeer Dawani

Photo credit: Facebook.com/Maid2Shop

One aspect of the Aurat March 2019 which, amidst the backlash from the patriarchy, did not receive much attention was female domestic workers coming out in significant numbers to ask (among other things) for their right to fair compensation. As seen above, they asked, “Do you pay your domestic workers the minimum wage?”

This is not an unreasonable question, but the fact of the matter is that, as a society, we don’t treat our labour well. This is true for labour across sectors (agricultural, industrial, and the service sector). Labour laws are routinely circumvented, and state enforcement of those laws is lax at best. (For example, see this recent report by Human Rights Watch documenting egregious violations in the garments industry.)

Domestic work, however, is perhaps one of the most exploitative forms of labour. Globally, the ILO estimated that domestic work is the number one form of forced labour in 2017. There is little research on Pakistan specifically. In one of the only studies on domestic work in Pakistan, Haris Gazdar and Ayesha Khan find that some domestic labour arrangements “come very close to outright slavery” due to the bondage that is created by employees borrowing in advance of their salaries.

This is just one form of exploitation however. As the Tayabba torture case demonstrated, other issues abound: child labour is rampant; there is widespread verbal, sexual and physical abuse, including inhumane work hours; and wages for domestic workers are far below minimum wage. In short, they do not have human dignity.

In particular on the minimum wage, the Labour Force Survey (LFS) can be used to provide an illustration of what is a startling picture. In 2017-18, more than half of those employed earned a monthly wage that was below the minimum wage of Rs.15,000. Specifically for the category ‘household employees’, the average wage is Rs.9,272. Most remarkable perhaps is the gender wage gap: female domestic workers earn Rs.6,098, almost two-thirds below the legal minimum wage and more than half of what men earn. It is thus clearly also a gendered issue.

Further, on such low income, it is no surprise that these workers have to take on insurmountable amounts of debt, are not able to send their children to school, and suffer from poor nutrition and health outcomes.

Are Domestic Workers Entitled to a Minimum Wage?

When you ask someone if they pay their domestic workers minimum wage, their response is usually a self-serving justification that domestic workers don’t fall under minimum wage laws. This is, unfortunately, largely true (but no less morally reprehensible).

Until a few months ago, no legislation existed across Pakistan for the protection of domestic workers. Although the Senate passed a bill a few years ago, this has not yet been enacted by the National Assembly. It was only at the end of January 2019 that legislation formalizing domestic workers was passed in Punjab. This Act criminalizes work below the age of 15, stipulates that domestic workers must be paid minimum wage as set by the Minimum Wage Board, and includes several benefits, such as sick and maternity leave and pensions. The legislation is progressive and unprecedented in Pakistan. Indeed, no other province has formalized domestic work yet.

While legislation will not change things overnight, and there are serious issues of implementation, it sets an important direction for a more equitable Pakistan. In a setting where market power determines wages – and employers have all the power – legislating for a minimum wage (and ideally a living wage) for domestic workers also creates the baseline for changing social norms. One hopes the other provinces can follow Punjab’s example sooner rather than later.

Nevertheless, taking care of those who literally take care of you, your children, and your home should be the humane thing to do, even if it isn’t the legal thing to do. I would like to end by quoting from a superb recent essay in the New York Times by Princeton Sociologist, Mathew Desmond, in which he powerfully illustrates the human impact of higher minimum wages:

“A $15 minimum wage is an antidepressant. It is a sleep aid. A diet. A stress reliever. It is a contraceptive, preventing teenage pregnancy. It prevents premature death. It shields children from neglect.”

Women’s Mobility and Labor Force Participation in Karachi: Some Preliminary Observations

By Natasha Ansari

Women working in a garment factory in Korangi's industrial area
Photo credit: Waseem Gazdar

Pakistan has the lowest female labor-force participation rates in South Asia[1] and urban areas perform especially poorly[2]. Distinct patriarchal norms interlinked with migrant status can affect women’s autonomy and thus labor-force participation in different ways. Recently the Collective for Social Science Research conducted fieldwork for the IGC supported project ‘Women's Mobility, Agency and Labour-Force Participation in the Mega-city of Karachi’ at three ethnically purposive sites. Many female respondents mentioned instances, relative to patriarchal norms and structures of their communities, which informed their ability to work in the city. In this blog, we attempt to present a current snapshot of some of the diversity of women’s experiences with regards to labor force participation in relation to their community norms and migrant status in Karachi.

Lyari

Lyari is considered one of the oldest neighborhoods in Karachi, and pre-dominantly consists of Baloch and Katchi populations that have long assimilated here. Most young Baloch and Katchi women we interviewed preferred to work and complete their education.[3] Two-thirds of younger women have at least completed Intermediate exams and nearly all aspired to hold undergraduate degrees if they didn’t already. In terms of mobility, our female Balochi respondents within Lyari did not report restrictions on mobility from patriarchal figures in the household or street harassment by strangers to the same degree as in other sites where this study was conducted. One respondent who works as a teacher noted that her community respected her a lot for her job, and that when she is walking to work, men actively move out of her way. The extent of mobility and the relative lack of restrictions described by some of the Balochi women around issues of respectability and safety, strictly in a comparative sense with other localities in Karachi, have been surprising for us to learn and are indicative of norms improving overtime, in conjunction with length of the migration period.

In terms of hindrance to employment, an issue most women noted was labor-market discrimination pertaining to ethnicity rather than gender. Nearly all of our respondents complained about rampant racism in the rest of the city against Lyari residents and its adverse effects on their employability. Being Baloch in addition to being a Lyari resident compounded the problem more so.

Baldia

Baldia was selected as a site because it consists of predominantly Pashtun migrants. For women, earning was considered disgraceful and dishonorable because it implied that the household was running on the woman’s income instead of the man’s and the sense of emasculation is a major cause of disrepute for the men in the community. Despite income issues, prospects of poverty still do not seem to mobilize women or let men from their household to relent and let them work or earn. The only instances women resorted to working were in the face of extreme destitution as a result of the absence of a male patriarchal figure and bread-winner in the household, at the expense of disrepute in the community. Older women also hardly held jobs – not even cleaning jobs in households, unlike the other two sites we investigated. Similarly, in terms of education households frequently stopped their daughter’s education after primary school or once they reached puberty, and cited ‘azaad mahol’ (permissive environment), which points towards future potential constraints to labor-force participation.

Korangi

Korangi was chosen due to the ethnically heterogeneous nature of the community and the prevalence of Urdu-speaking and Sindhi populations in the area.

In terms of employment, similar to Lyari, the long assimilated Urdu-speaking and Sindhi women did low-paying private school teaching jobs. If they had income issues they took up better paying, but far more demanding, company or factory jobs. Working in the nearby garment factories was commonly reported by some of the respondents. Older uneducated women usually took up work as cleaners in other households but this was not considered respectful work by them. In contrast, newer Sindhi migrant women were not allowed to work at all, especially if they were young, due to anxieties pertaining to the strangeness of the new and unfamiliar city.

Conclusion

There is indication that patriarchal arrangements relative to migrant status and cultural notions of respectability, determine the extent of women’s participation in the labor market. The relegation of women’s labor force participation only to certain acceptable occupations or by keeping women at home entirely, unquestioningly indicate that gender norms play a role in shaping women’s labor force participation in Pakistan. In an urban context, mobility is complicated by distinct norms pertaining to patriarchy within their communities, geographic and spatial anxieties due to migrant status, and histories of conflict within the city. Our preliminary findings suggest a differentiated employment strategy concerning women’s labor-force participation, underpinned by social-policy that is context-specific to communities within Karachi is needed.


[1] 57 percent in Bangladesh (ILO 2014), 29 percent in India (ILO 2014), and 22 percent in Pakistan (PLFPS 2015)

[2] 10 percent for urban areas in Pakistan in 2015 (PLFPS 2015) , as compared to 15.5 percent for urban areas in India in 2011 (ILO 2014) and 14.7 percent for Bangladesh in 2016 (QLFS 2017)

[3] The jobs many women hold are low-paying teaching jobs at local private schools because they are a walking distance from their homes, which indicates that many young women do struggle with family restrictions on their mobility

References

Chaudhary, R., & Verick, S. (2014). Female labor force participation in India and beyond ILO Asia-Pacific Working Paper Series: International Labour Organization.

Labor Force Survey 2014-15. (2015): Pakistan Bureau of Statistics.

Quarterly Labor Force Survey 2015-16. (2017): Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics.

*This blog was originally published in "Pakistan's Growth Story" 

What women do

by Haris Gazdar

Women and girls cut grass for fodder in Mirpurkhas
Photo credit: Collective team

We use the word ‘right’ a lot, but it is a haloed and distant term. In many languages it invokes truth – an aura of goodness and an assuring feeling of timelessness. A nation has the right to self-determination, an individual has the right to her or his conscience, and a child has the right to education. A nation can be hundreds or thousands of years old, and might have always had the right to self-determination, but it can practice self-determination once it is recognised by other nations. Ask any Palestinian. The individual’s right to conscience might have existed since before the day Socrates drank poisoned hemlock, but it can be practised when other individuals and the legal and political systems recognise that a person cannot be punished for their beliefs alone. The child always had the right to be educated but will actually be schooled when the community recognises this right and provides the necessary resources. Recognition, therefore, is the more accessible fellow-traveller of right. It is not only the way in which rights are realised, but is also a step towards making rights enforceable.

Is the Minimum Wage a ‘Living Wage’ in Pakistan?

by Kabeer Dawani

A worker stitches a football at a stitching center in rural Sialkot
Photo credit: Collective team

In June 2016, while announcing their budgets for the 2016-17 fiscal year, the federal government and all the provincial governments increased the monthly minimum wage for unskilled workers from Rs.13,000 to Rs.14,000. Similar increases in the minimum wage have been made in previous years as well, and as far as we know, no criteria on needs or cost of living are used to determine the minimum wage. Given that these increases are arbitrary, the question arises: is the minimum wage even sufficient for a worker and his/her family to live a basic but decent life?