ILPC 2026

Lack of compliance tends to characterise domestic work because employers and workers conceive of it not as a labour relationship but as a form of personal ‘assistance.’ Thus, the contemporary notion of domestic work is still based on the original servitude model that created this set of jobs. At the end of the nineteenth century, when Latin American societies started their demographic transitions, domestic work was the only available position on the labour market for unskilled women and patronage was the most common way of dealing with urban poverty. The state handed over children –particularly, young girls living on the street –to rich families, which sheltered them on the condition that they become servants. A similar practice known as criadazgo continues in Paraguay today.

During the twentieth century, although domestic work changed due to increasing numbers of women on the labour market –especially in middle class jobs–, it continued to be women's work, a work without social value. Since domestic work was seen as a natural activity for women, domestic workers were viewed as family members and subject to the family's authority. Even today, the notion of labour –that is, a paid activity that provides access to labour and social rights– continues to be mixed with the traditional idea of service. The social inequality that led workers from poor sectors to seek work in wealthy households contributes to reaffirming this model. In this context, labour legislation is considered protection against discriminatory practices but not essential to the organisation or regulation of this kind of labour relations.

Thus, undeclared employment is the norm in this sector, which means that labour rights do not apply and workers have no access to social benefits. Given that the state has traditionally been unwilling or unable to ensure compliance with the law, informal arrangements govern this particular type of labour relation in most cases. Therefore, for the law to be implemented, employers and domestic workers have to engage in a contractual relationship.

In different ways, legislators from Argentina, Chile and Paraguay sought to change the cultural notion of domestic work in order to transform this familiar relationship based on care and trust into a contractual labour relation regulated by the law. As legislators reiterated several times during the congressional debates, the new laws needed to revolutionise social and cultural order. This was the ultimate challenge for regulatory reforms on domestic work legislation in these countries. Hence, the old question remains: how can laws change cultural norms and what legal resources are available to transform social practices? In particular, can the law transform labour practices like those associated with domestic work where the law is not acknowledged as the governing principle? Based on the analysis of legislations and congressional debates, this paper aims to understand how legislators of these three countries addressed to these issues.