Honouring the Invisible Backbone: A Decolonial Feminist Reflection on International Domestic Workers Day
Attention: Editors
Date: 30 June 2025
On June 16, while South Africa commemorated the young revolutionaries of 1976 who rose up for freedom and justice, we also honoured another group of quiet revolutionaries—domestic workers.
Their resistance is not in protests or placards, but in their daily struggle against systemic exploitation, gendered injustice, and economic invisibility.
As OZA, we are using this moment – as the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FFD4) is taking place in Sevilla, Spain (30 June – 3 July 2025) – to bring attention to this courageous yet marginalized group who continue to rise daily under the weight of exploitation, gendered injustice, and economic violence. – Nkateko Chauke – Interim Executive Director, Oxfam South Africa
Follow FFD4 LIVE here: https://financing.desa.un.org/ffd4
Domestic workers, mostly fall under the demographic of Black womxn, are the foundation of our care economy. They cook, clean, raise children, provide emotional support, and sustain households, often while their own families go without their presence or care.
In our homes, in our communities, in our economy—domestic workers are the frontline of care – and yet, their labour is consistently undervalued and their dignity often denied.
This serves as a reminder of the inherited colonial systems that have long depended on the under-paid care work and invisible labour of Black womxn.
In the eyes of the market, care work remains unrecognised, uncounted, and undervalued. This is not an accident, it is by design. Capitalism treats care as though it is inexhaustible, free, and outside of the measurable economic frame. The deliberate invisibility of care work sustains profit margins by externalising the real costs—onto the shoulders of the poor, black, and marginalised.
Historically, across South Africa and the African continent, thousands of black womxn leave their own children behind—often in rural villages or informal settlements—to care for other people’s children in cities and suburbs. This often means that they cause absent-parent wounds for their own children, who are left feeling emotionally abandoned and psychologically traumatized, while their parents are fighting to provide resources for their education and basic everyday survival.
Apartheid spatial designs confined Black womxn to servitude, forcing them to migrate to cities under exploitative conditions to serve as “helpers”—but never as full citizens. This structural violence persists today. Laws may have changed, but power hasn’t. Many domestic workers still earn below minimum wage, remain excluded from UIF, and are vulnerable to abuse. The law recognises them; but the system does not.
Political philosopher Nancy Fraser’s three dimensional theory of social justice: Redistribution (economic), recognition (cultural), and representation (political) expands on this form of marginalisation that she calls “the crisis of care”—a collapse created when capitalism devours the very labour that sustains it. When public investment in care is withdrawn, and when womxn are pushed into paid labour without redistributing unpaid work, the burden becomes indefensible.
At Oxfam South Africa, we do not see care as a personal virtue or familial duty. We see it as a public good and a political battleground. Care is not charity—it is labour. And its erasure is economic violence.
We therefore call for urgent feminist policy action rooted in the 4Rs framework:
- Recognise: Care work as essential infrastructure—social, emotional, and economic.
- Reduce: The burden through investment in water, transport, childcare, healthcare, and caregiver support.
- Redistribute: Responsibility across the state, private sector, men, and communities.
- Represent: Caregivers in all decision-making spaces, including fiscal policy and development planning.
And we add a fifth R—Remunerate: Because recognition without compensation is exploitation by another name.
We further demand:
- A Universal Basic Income (UBI) as a tool for economic liberation, allowing all care workers to live with dignity, not dependence.
- The full enforcement of labour protections for domestic workers, including contracts, UIF, fair leave, and occupational safety.
- Gender-responsive budgeting (GRB) that allocates real resources to reduce and support care work.
- National education campaigns and dialogues that shift cultural narratives—care is not a woman’s burden; it is everyone’s responsibility.
- A care-centred approach to development that values time, dignity, and life chances—not just market productivity.
Until care work is recognised, redistributed, and properly remunerated, our economy remains unjust and our democracy incomplete.
Let us honour domestic workers not with symbolic gestures, but with systemic change.
Honour care with wages. Honour care with rights. Honour care with power.
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Media Enquiries:
Bongani Maseko
📧 ozacommunication@oxfam.org.za
📞 +27 61 545 9425
