Domestic Workers Are People With Dreams and the Time Has Come for Their Rights to Prove It By Sarah
- thevoiceofdomesticworkers
- 19 minutes ago
- 3 min read
I have been a domestic worker since July 2010. I began with a clear understanding of what this work would ask of me, and I have shown up every single day since with exactly what it requires: care, commitment, and the steady belief that the people who do this job deserve to be treated with dignity and equality.
My strength is rooted in family. On the hardest days, prayer is what holds me. I am completely hopeful that things will improve for domestic workers, holding that belief at the highest level. I also see the world as capable of fully understanding the value and dignity of this profession. My employers offer a lot of respect, and so does the government in my current experience. That positive assessment of my immediate environment coexists with a clear-eyed view of how much still needs to change at the systemic level.
What I want the world to hear is something I have thought about carefully. I am not just a worker. I am a person with dreams, a family, and the right to be treated with dignity and equality. That framing matters. When a domestic worker is seen only as a function, only as the person who manages the household and then fades into the background, something essential is being missed. I am a person. My dreams are real. My family is real. And my right to dignity is exactly as real as anyone else's.
The right I identify as most urgently needed is the right to renew the Overseas Domestic Worker Visa. I give that urgency the highest possible rating and consider it, along with all four of the rights VODW campaigns for, to be life-changing. Not merely very important. Life-changing. The distinction matters because it signals the depth of what these rights would mean in practice, not just a policy adjustment but a genuine transformation of daily life.
I identify the loss of all rights as equally damaging, confirming that no single campaign can be treated as separate from the others. The right to change employer without restrictions protects me from entrapment. The right to renew the ODW Visa ensures continuity. The right to settlement provides permanence. The path to citizenship offers full belonging. Each one builds on the others, and none of them can be considered complete without the rest.
The government, in my view, is providing some protection to migrant domestic workers but falls significantly short of what is needed. I spend three hours each week worrying about my job and visa situation, a quiet but real cost drawn from my weekly life.
I believe workers must speak up and raise awareness, governments must make laws, and NGOs and advocates must use their voice and their influence to push for change. No single actor can carry this. It takes everyone.
If these rights were restored, it would be very important. Those words, offered simply, contain the fullness of what I am asking for. The full recognition of domestic workers as people with dreams, protected by rights that reflect our worth. VODW stands with me in that vision, and in the work of making it real.
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