The Problem of Domestic Work at the International Labour Organization

This paper examines the processes of attempting to set standards for one of the largest labour sectors in the world that employs women. It demonstrates how “domestic work” came to be understood as a problem that demanded responses and solutions in the context of the International Labour Organization. It does so through the lenses of problematization, a mode of analysis that makes it possible for something to become an object of thought. While the emerging literature on problematization in IR illustrates how these processes may be contingent, or a result of outright power struggles, this paper rather demonstrates how problematization may be characterised as one of iteration. It shows the repetition and progression in thinking about the problem of domestic work, the changes in solutions offered, and the conceptual and theoretical innovations to understand elements of domestic work. Through the iterative actions of various actors, which eventually included domestic workers themselves, the phenomenon of domestic work increased in comprehensibility and tractability, from a “non-problem” to a problem of the global economy.