No longer undervalued, underpaid and unprotected

How two Latin American businesses are recognising and rewarding domestic workers.

We are facing a global care crisis. With shrinking fiscal space and growing debt, many countries are failing to address this crisis, with enormous costs to health, education, child and elderly care systems that are vital to our resilience, to our economies and to progress on gender equality.

The care economy consists of the paid and unpaid labor and services that support caregiving in all its forms. It includes work in the home. But it also includes work outside of the home, paid work taking care of people or households not in one’s direct family. This includes domestic work, child and elder care, and care for those who are ill or who have disabilities. 

Care and domestic work is feminized - it is mainly done by women and girls - and it is also racialized, in that women and girls of color and from Indigenous communities tend to spend more time undertaking unpaid care and domestic work and also provide more of the paid care and domestic work services, which are typically underpaid, insecure and poor quality jobs. Domestic workers frequently have no formal contracts, no workers’ rights, and no benefits or protections from fair work frameworks.

To give an idea of scale using an example from Latin America, it is estimated that 16.5 million women working in Latin America (and 14% of all working women in the region) are domestic workers. A 2022 study by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimated that investments in universal childcare and long-term care services have the potential to generate almost 300 million jobs by 2035, of which 78 percent are expected to go to women.

A part of the solution to the care crisis requires recognizing and rewarding paid domestic work. On World Domestic Workers Day (16th June), Kore Global would like to celebrate two exciting Latin American businesses that are tackling, head-on, the challenges faced by domestic workers, and demonstrating to the world that fair work frameworks are a vital foundation for the caring society we all seek. 

Homely’s solution in Mexico

Mexico has approximately 2.3 million domestic workers, 90% of whom are women. Around 97% of domestic workers operate in the informal sector, meaning they have no contracts or essential employee benefits, such as access to health services and pensions.  In this context, Homely utilizes an app to connect customers with domestic workers. The company provides domestic workers with formal employment opportunities, competitive salaries, a range of additional benefits (such as monthly bonuses), educational opportunities related to digital and financial education, as well as English language courses. Homely was the first digital platform in Mexico to offer formal employment and social benefits to independent domestic workers. Homely also advocates for domestic workers' rights in the media and through public events. And when you listen to Homely’s impressive CEO and founder of this company - Melina Cruz - tell the story of why she founded Homely, her grandmother being a domestic worker that migrated from a small town to Mexico City, you can understand her sense of purpose in striving to make domestic work a profession of choice, not the last resort option, as it is for many today. Read more about Homely here.

Symplifica’s solution in Colombia

While Colombian law mandates employers to formalize their domestic workers by registering their employment contracts and enrolling them into social security systems, this is not the reality for most domestic workers, and about 80% of domestic workers are informal. So, Symplifica is a company that seeks to streamline the job formalization process for domestic workers in Colombia and more recently in Mexico too.  Its objective is to enable employers to sign contracts with their domestic workers and enroll them in national social security systems so they can access these benefits. In addition, Symplifica recently launched an app that offers educational services, housing subsidies, and job search assistance for domestic workers and their families. Since 2016, Symplifica has served 15,000 employers and 18,000 domestic workers. Read more about Symplifica here.

With thanks to Carolina Robino. Our conversations with her have inspired, and continue to inspire, our work on the care economy.

You can read more about Kore Global’s work as part of Transforming the Care Economy through Impact Investing on our website, on the Care Economy Knowledge Hub, and in this blog. You can also listen to Rebecca Calder and Carolina Robino talking about the care economy with Natalia Bonilla on her fantastic Womanhood and International Relations podcast.