CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

In South countries, domestic work is a very important activity among the female population. Domestic workers represent 11.8% of working women in Asia, 13.6% in Africa and 26.6% in Latin America. According to ILO estimates, 88% of domestic work at the global level is concentrated on these three continents (ILO, 2013). To analyze the differences and the similarities in domestic work regulation on the Global South, we choose two countries engaged in a comprehensive renew of regulation during the last three years, in which domestic work represent an important part of female labor force" Argentina and Brazil. Since 2000, the International Labour Organization has promoted "decent work" as the model for domestic labor. One of the most relevant features of this activity is informality. In an attempt to achieve labor standards, the ILO approved a specific convention for domestic workers in 2011. This convention, C189, establishes some fundamental principles, such as freedom of association or the abolition of child and compulsory labor. The convention also includes labor and social rights, such as limited working hours, a minimum wage, and access to social security systems. The main goal of this paper is to analyze the ways in which each country introduced the standards in theirs own regulations. Because innovatory regulation appears in a particular context, in confrontation with the existing regulations, in this exercise of comparative regulation, our interest is to understand how the adoption of labor standard is related to past domestic work regulation and changes in the general labor regulation. For this research, we will focus on the analysis of old and new domestic work regulations, labor laws concerning salary workers, new regulations concerning labor market, and parliamentary debates, in each country.