Female Child Domestic Workers’ Limited Agency: Working and Living in the Private Homes of Employers in Bangladesh

Abstract

Child domestic work is a unique form of child work as it takes place in the private spaces of the employers’ home, away from the public’s potentially protective gaze. The disciplining of live-in child domestic workers, which is prevalent in the private sphere of the employer, can be characterized as a Foucauldian panopticon whereby the employer exerts surveilling power over the child worker. This chapter will focus on female child domestic workers who are staying with their employers in Bangladesh and the limited agency they have to adapt their living and working space for their own benefit. In other words, the focus will be on the two different, but in this case, overlapping spaces of workspace and the home. In particular, this chapter focuses on the working children’s limited opportunities for agency, i.e., capacity for self-determination and power to make decisions about their own lives. Child domestic workers live according to norms of a Majority world childhood, with work as a duty and familial responsibility. The main argument that results from this analysis is that children who work in their employers’ home must be recognized as workers and their agency protected in this vulnerable work relationship. The female child domestic workers are especially constrained due to gendered social norms confining girls to private spaces. Therefore, access to potentially liberating spaces is especially important for female child domestic workers’ well-being.

Portions of this chapter also appeared in “Space-time geography of female live-in child domestic workers in Dhaka, Bangladesh” (Children's Geographies, Vol. 12(2), pp. 154–169) by Kari B. Jensen, 2014.