News, comment and features on domestic workers, also known as maids and helpers
July 2024
Opinion
The Hindujas made UK headlines for mistreating their servants. In India no one batted an eye – here’s why
Amrit Dhillon in Delhi
Although some domestic staff in the subcontinent are treated well, for most it is a harsh and thankless existence, says freelance journalist Amrit Dhillon
May 2024
From ratcatcher to keeper of the snow: royal servants enter the spotlight in new exhibitions
Life below stairs in the palaces and grand houses of Britain takes centre stage in a series of exhibitions
June 2023
The future of work
Urgent action needed to protect ‘dying’ Kenyan domestic workers in Gulf, say rights groups
Philippine job agencies cheating women with illegal fees and crippling loans
March 2023
Calls to close loophole that puts UK domestic workers at risk of ‘slavery’
Government yet to overhaul family worker exemption, which permits live-in staff to be paid less than national minimum wage
January 2023
Brief letters
Learning Ukrainian as a sign of solidarity
Brief letters: Anti-Putin resistance | Time for brief letters | Junior stargazing events | Housework solution | Leonard Cohen and Janis Joplin
September 2022
‘Modern-day slavery’: Kenyan domestic workers tell of abuse in Saudi Arabia
Rights and freedom
Oman ‘failing to stop trafficking and abuse of migrant domestic workers’
September 2021
Rights and freedom
Where’s Edelyn? The search for the Filipina maid who vanished in Saudi Arabia
Mired in debt, the mother of three left to work as part of the Gulf’s kafala labour system. She was last heard from in 2015 and her family want answers
June 2021
The outspoken
‘I want them to feel human again’: the woman who escaped slavery in the UK – and fights to free others
Human rights this fortnight – in pictures
Hungary’s LGBT protests and Juneteenth Day: human rights this fortnight – in pictures
May 2021
Other lives
Cleotilde Mercado obituary
Other lives: Nanny who left the Philippines in 1973 to work in London, where she spent the rest of her life
March 2021
Rights and freedom
Alone in Oman: Covid worsens abuse for trafficked women
Women from Sierra Leone tricked into servitude find themselves sold on under Gulf’s kafala system
January 2021
'I want to go home': Filipina domestic workers face exploitative conditions
New £120m fund to provide boost for care sector staffing levels
December 2020
Human rights in focus
Day off denied: how Covid confined Hong Kong's domestic 'helpers'
Many migrant women have been cooped up in employers’ homes for months, unable to take time off or travel to families
November 2020
My best shot
A frontline worker trapped in a hospital: Hannah Grace Deller's best photograph
‘Arman had got trapped in the one-way Covid system. I was struck by how doubly isolated he was: behind the door, behind his PPE’
October 2020
Human rights in focus
'They have to be punished': the mothers trapped in the UAE by 'love crimes'
Single migrant women left destitute by Covid can’t leave until they have served sentences for sex outside marriage – but virus restrictions mean prisons won’t accept them
September 2020
The forgotten victims of the Beirut explosion: domestic workers
Nesrine Malik
Dumped on the streets after Covid-19 hit, hundreds of nannies are now starving amid the ruins of the blast, says Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik
August 2020
United Voices: outsourced key workers fighting for equal rights – video
As work in the UK gets more precarious and the ‘gig economy’ booms, trade unionism is being reimagined and people from a wide range of backgrounds are joining new kinds of unions, often for the first time
