Through a Magnifying Glass: The Exploitation of Female Migrant Workers in the Middle East

By. Riya Pharsiyawar

DOI. 10.57912/31129789

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Though chattel slavery may be a relic of the past, modern forms of slavery persist and prevail worldwide. A look through the magnifying glass shows that an estimated 50 million people live under such conditions today, including roughly 1.7 million in Arab states. In the Middle East, this slavery takes the form of exploitative migrant labor. Migrants from South Asia and East Africa are stripped of their rights as their employers use legal loopholes to shackle them to their workplaces. In October of 2025, Saudi Arabia, at last, took the crucial action of abolishing the kafala system that allows for these forms of modern slavery. Yet, this crucial reform has received little coverage from Western media. Throughout the Western world, there is a significant lack of attention to the impact of modern slavery, particularly when it comes to female domestic workers in the Middle East. These women’s struggles are compounded as they experience sexism, sexual abuse, racism, and labor rights abuses. The international community can no longer continue its insufficient response to these blatant human rights abuses. Instead, it must push for the broad adoption of the International Labor Organization’s Domestic Worker Convention. Furthermore, countries of origin must take action to create bilateral labor agreements that protect their citizens and hold Middle Eastern nations accountable.

In many Gulf nations, the kafala system is an immigrant sponsorship system that grants employers excessive amounts of control over their migrant employees’ ability to live and work in the country legally. The system was created in the 1950s to protect local firms and regulate the treatment of foreign workers. Under this system, employers may secure or cancel work and residency permits at any time, and they may withhold consent for a worker to leave both their job and the country. The kafala system is thus an impetus for modern slavery, as migrants are forced to do the bidding of their employer, with their residency and livelihoods hanging in the balance. Immigrants agree to participate in the kafala system either because they are desperate to send remittances and support their families, or because employment agencies have misled them about the true nature of their migration and working conditions.

While the plight of male migrant laborers is more often highlighted in discourse surrounding modern slavery in the Middle East, female domestic workers are frequently overlooked. Women who migrate to the Middle East are often not working as laborers, unlike their male counterparts. Instead, they take on domestic roles–as household help, for instance. Local families regard the employment of domestic workers as a symbol of status, making this form of household help an integral part of the Middle Eastern social fabric. This specific field of work then presents its own challenges. According to Amnesty International, these women suffer from extreme overwork with a chronic lack of consistent pay. Additional abuses include isolation from families through confiscation of their phones, inadequate living conditions, insufficient food, and verbal degrading. The domestic workers are inhibited from escaping these forms of abuse, as it is a criminal offense for domestic workers to leave their workplace, thereby constraining female domestic workers both socially and legally.

From an intersectional lens, it is crucial to highlight the fact that many of these women not only face gender-based violence but are also subject to racial discrimination and abuse. These workers, predominantly South Asian and African, are met with an added degree of hostility from their employers and society. Kenyan women who worked in households were denigrated, with their employers calling them “Black animals,” “prostitutes,” “monkeys,” or “servants,” and preventing them from using the same utensils as the family. The kafala system in and of itself reinforces these discriminatory practices by creating a racialized hierarchy in which South Asians and East Africans are at the bottom, working the dirty, dangerous, and difficult jobs that the upper echelons do not work. 

The question then arises: How can change be made? Saudi Arabia’s decision to abolish the kafala system is a crucial step towards a future in which modern slavery truly comes to an end. Success in abolishing the kafala system would ensure that workers are no longer dependent on their employers’ approval for visas and can freely change jobs. Domestic workers are also specifically highlighted and granted important protections, such as allowing domestic worker contracts to be transferred to other employers with government monitoring to prevent abuse. While celebrating these progressive measures, the international community must hold Saudi Arabia accountable for fulfilling its commitments. Many Middle Eastern countries have protections for migrants written into law, but reality is often very different from what is on paper. Through this recent law’s newly broadened avenues for communication between Saudi Arabia and the origin countries of its migrants, origin countries must ensure that the kafala system is truly abolished in practice.

The power of international discourse and activism must not be discounted. The deliberate and consistent call-outs from international actors like the Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have clearly made an impact on Saudi Arabia. Intergovernmental organizations and the global community have the power to pressure nations like Saudi Arabia to take substantive action on humanitarian issues occurring on their soil. The international community must draw on Saudi Arabia’s outlined reforms and encourage origin countries to establish bilateral labor migration agreements (BLMAs) with Middle Eastern host countries. Such BLMAs would allow origin countries to ensure their citizens’ human rights are being protected by the nations they migrated to, particularly in cases of domestic abuse that go under the radar. Nations can utilize existing frameworks to build a foundation for their agreements; The United Nations, in collaboration with the ILO and IOM, has developed a guidance sheet “to assist countries of origin and destination to design, negotiate, implement, monitor and evaluate rights-based and gender-responsive BLMAs.” 

Furthermore, the international community must push towards more widespread ratification of the ILO’s Domestic Workers Convention in order to provide an additional layer of protection for female domestic workers specifically. This convention was created in 2011 to provide global protection for domestic workers. Signatories of this convention pledge to set minimum wages, enforce good working conditions, and abolish forced labor. According to the Human Rights Watch, “trade unions, domestic workers, and their allies” have since been “active in more than 92 countries to push for domestic workers’ rights and ratification of the Domestic Workers Convention.” Most Middle Eastern countries, however, have either not ratified or poorly enforce the ILO’s Domestic Workers Convention. Executing the measures outlined in this convention allows a nation’s domestic workers to be fairly treated and protected from the rampant abuse that they are often subjected to.

Slavery has yet to be abolished worldwide. To this day, female domestic workers who migrate to the Middle East in search of financial stability are instead met with abusive employers, racial discrimination, sexual assault, and legal traps that hold them captive. The international community must hold a magnifying glass to the plight of these often overlooked women. Looking through this intersectional lens, the need for systemic change becomes clear. International pressure can foster such change, pushing for increased bilateral labor migration agreements and ratification of the Domestic Workers Convention. Only then can migrant women’s rights be sufficiently protected. Only then can a look through the magnifying glass showcase a healthy working environment for women seeking financial opportunity.