Child Domestic Workers in the Philippines
Introduction
“I wake up at 3am to water the plants, clean the house, go to market, cook, wash the plates, wash the clothes, iron the clothes. I return to the market three times a day. From 5pm to 9pm, they allow me to go to school. When I return, I have to wash the dishes, then I massage both my male and female employer until 1am. I only have two hours to sleep.” This is how a girl from Buikidnon, Philippines described her experience with child labour to Anti-Slavery International researchers. She is a former child domestic worker who entered domestic work at nine years old, enduring her employer’s abuse.
Children are considered the future of our countries, with their own rights, especially to
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In many cultures, domestic work is seen as safe. It is even seen as normal that young girls enter into domestic work, as it is useful preparation for their later life when they will look after their own home. With suitable working conditions, usually seen as better than their current living situations at home, and better opportunities, especially for education, the girls enter into domestic work with high hopes. However, this is often not the case and child domestic workers are instead subject to exceptionally long days, unsatisfactory living conditions, a lack of education (even if they were previously promised it) and sexual and physical abuse. In the Philippines, domestic work can even be a lure to entice these girls across borders and into worse forms of labour, such as prostitution.
In 2012, the ILO produced Global Estimates on Forced Labour. This report shows that 17.2 million children are in paid or unpaid domestic work in the home of a third party or employer and that 65.1% of all child domestic workers are below 14 years with 7.4 million aged 5 to 11 and 3.8 million aged 12 to 14 (International Labour Organization, 2013). The average entry age for this work is between nine and fourteen years of age, with some girls as young as seven. There are more girls under the age of sixteen in domestic work than any other type of work. Because the majority of people entering into these roles are females, it is not viewed as proper work so therefore
Child labour is much worse than it is portrayed by the media. Child labour includes the employment of children in the business, food, clothing industries that is considered to be illicit or exploitative (Bonnet, 2017). It denies children their basic rights such as protection and freedom from exploitation. Children, instead of going to school, work in dangerous and physically damaging work due to limited access to resources. Reliable statistics are scare as child labour continues to grow each day in third world countries such as Africa. An abundance of evidence supports the idea that child slavery still exists in modern societies, where an estimation of 218 million children between 5 and 17 years are affected by slavery around the world (ILO,
When their work do not affect their “health and personal development or interfere with their schooling,” they do not fit the negative notion of child labor (ILO, 1996). Children sometimes assist their parents with housework and take a part in building family businesses without their working hours affecting primary education. This is indeed a beneficial experience for children, because they learn to be productive within their communities. On the other hand, ILO (1996) applies the term child labor when work “is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children; and interferes with their schooling by; depriving them of the opportunity to attend school; obliging them to leave school prematurely; or requiring them to attempt to combine school attendance with excessively long and heavy work.” When child labor is engaged in enslavement, separation from families, and misplacement of children on the streets, ILO experts refer to it as the most extreme forms of child
Child labour is a very real problem in the world today, and although it is declining, progress is happening at a slow and unequal pace. Child labour by the International Labour Organization is defined as “work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development (Diallo, Etienne, & Mehran, 2013, p. 2).” In the most extreme forms of child labour it could account for child enslavement, separation from their families, exposure to serious hazards and illnesses and being left to fend for themselves on the streets (Dinopoulos & Zhao, 2007). In order for certain types of work to be included as “child labour” depends on the child’s age, the type of work,
Next, child labour is widespread in developing countries. According to International Labour Organization (ILO), at least 211 million children were working around the world and mostly in developing countries, with over 8 million engage in hazardous and exploitative forms of child labour in year 2001. Child labour is those below the legal working age or supposed to be in school. Thus, a child’s working reduces his or her
In addition to that, one of the most important side effects is that working children may experience physical harm in a number of ways. These include an increased risk of accidents; children and young people often work in unregulated environments where little attention is paid to safety. Working children often experience violence in the workplace from adult staff and managers. Children and young people working in the street are also at risk of physical violence from police officers and other authority figures. Risk of illness from poor hygiene and exposure to bad weather can also be witnessed. Therefore, child labor involves the following characteristics: it violates a nation’s minimum age laws, involves intolerable abuse, such as child slavery, child trafficking, debt bondage, forced labor, or illicit activities, prevents children from going to school, and uses children to undermine labor standards (December, 2007). Child labor can also be developmentally, emotionally, and physically abusive. Child workers are more vulnerable than adult workers, leaving them at risk for exploitation, dangerous and abusive conditions. In many parts of the world, it too often involves confinement, bondage, and forced labor; it frequently involves dangerous and unhealthy working conditions. Children work longer hours have lower pays than adults. Some children are sold into labor
In the mid- 1800s , in more developed countries such as great britain and the united states , child labor was simply part of the ebb and flow of family life. whether children worked on family farms, as apprentices to artisans , or as domestic laborers in kitchens and households, their labors was considered to be a significant , and necessary , contribution to the family’s survival. By the mid-1900s , most developed countries has compulsory education laws that limited child labor (zoltan ,melanie barton). By the turn of the twenty- first century , discussions on child labor centered On these less - development regions , specifically on countries such as mexico, Guatcmala, china, and malaysia (zoltan , melanie barton). Crities of child labor
Child labor is the use of children in industry or business, that can deprive them from their childhood, keep them away from attending school, and that is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful. This practice have numerous occurrences all through history and is one of the worst forms of child exploitation, particularly, with during the industrial revolution. Over the years it has grown to become one of the many serious social issues around the world. According to statistics provided by UNICEF, there are an estimated 250 million children aged 5 to 14 years employed in child labor worldwide and this figure is continuously increasing. Even with the standardized federal labor laws in effect in 1938 not a lot has changed. Child labor not only causes damage to a child’s physical and mental health but also keep him deprive them from their basic rights to education, childhood, and freedom. Child labor has very bad effects on the society that can result to consequences that can exploit the future generation.
Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild’s collection of writing titled: Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex workers in the New Economy, published in 2002, is a good description of the dirty little secrets that haunt many underprivileged, non-white, Third World women experience. This reading is a rather detailed story of hard working women that are trying to support their families back in their native lands. Domestic servants are nothing new to the world- it’s something that has been passed down through many generations, continuing the persona of oppressed women. Millions of people, mostly from poor countries, flee hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles to seek better pay for their families.
Child labor is the working of young adults slaving away for low payment. Since old times, adolescents have worked to support their household, especially the families that live on a farm. Most children worked to help bring in money because their parents didn’t have jobs.The young children were forced to slave away long hours in risky and unsanitary conditions, with their pay extremely
One of the major issues faced between third world countries and with western civilization is the question of having child labor laws. Most of the westernization would all agree to get rid of the young under aged children from working in these dark, tight, ill ventilated factories or workshops. However, Chita Divakaruni explains how if the child labor law was to be passed then the children will have no other way to survive and result into being a robber or even worse and lose all their pride that they carry. Divakaruni explains how the passing of the child labor law in the United States, which will prohibit the import of goods from factories that has under aged children working in, would affect the children’s life as a whole and these children will have to result in a worse way of living to survive. On the other hand, Americans see an under aged child working long hard hours in a factory as a huge problem that needs to be stopped. These
Alberto’s example is not the only example of child labor. There are 196 countries in the world today, and 46 countries don’t protect children under the age of 18 from performing hazardous work. Globally 168 million children between ages 5-17 are child laborers. Many kids never go to school or drop out limiting future options and forcing children to accept low wage work as adults and to raise their own children in poverty. Children work because work is perceived as the best use of their time in contributing to the needs of the family and preparing them for the life they are expected to
Child Labor is not an isolated problem. The phenomenon of child labor is an effect of economic discrimination. In different parts of the world, at different stages of histories, laboring of child has been a part of economic life. More than 200 million children worldwide, some are as young as 4 and 5
As of 2013, 168 million children worldwide are engaged in child labor. The Sub-Saharan Africa region has the second highest number of child laborers in the world; about 59 million as of 2012 (borenproject.org). Child labor refers to the employment of children in any work that deprives children of their childhood, interferes with their ability to attend school, and is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful (ilo.org). Children work in dangerous conditions, harming their mental and physical state. More than half of these children are exposed to the worst forms of child labor. More should be done to end child labor. These children experience unfair treatment, hazardous living conditions, and
Children around the world are forced to work jobs harder than grown adults have ever experienced and it needs to stop. Much of this has stemmed from another nation-wide problem: Human Trafficking. Some children as young as four years old are subjected to Human Trafficking and have eighteen hour work days (Potenza). This amount of strenuous work only leaves six hours in a day to eat, sleep, and rest when the recommended hours of sleep needed for a school aged child is ten to twelve hours a night ("All About Sleep."). A number of laws have been set in place to try to stop Child Labor but it is rampant and nowhere near completely eradicated. More than 500,000 minors work on farms, many of which do not have a limit to the amount of hours they
Children are the outcome of two people’s love, and should be loved with the same burning love the parents have for eachother. Although labor through children has been seen in human history for years, spiking and shrinking through different time periods. Child labor risks are now rising across the world, especially in supply chain countries, according to a report from Maplecroft. This topic did not used to be of much controversy, as it was the norm. In the U.S today, child labor is rarely present, but in other countries it is much more prevalent than we think. Although there is probably not an immediate solution to this problem, people can make small changes in their daily lives to eventually fix this problem once and for all.