Qacha’sNek, Feb. 02 — Domestic work is one of the most common forms of employment for women in Lesotho, yet it remains among the least protected.
In private homes across the country and in cities beyond its borders, Basotho women cook, clean, iron, and care for children, the elderly, and people living with disabilities under conditions shaped by informality, low wages, and weak enforcement of labour laws. Their labour sustains households and economies, but often at the cost of their own security, dignity and family life.
For most women, domestic work is not a free choice but an economic necessity. Lesotho’s labour market has grown increasingly fragile, with unemployment stuck in double digits and broader labour under-utilisation affecting a far larger share of working-age people, according to the Lesotho’s 2024 Labour Force Survey and World Bank assessments.
With limited opportunities for steady income, particularly in rural areas, women are pushed into domestic work as one of the few immediately accessible ways to support children and elderly dependents.
This pressure has intensified as Lesotho’s narrow economic base has come under strain. Manufacturing, especially the garment sector, and remittances remain central to the economy, yet repeated factory shocks and retrenchments have squeezed household incomes. As jobs disappear at home, migration for informal work across the South African border has become a survival strategy rather than an aspiration.
For many Basotho women, access to domestic work in South Africa is facilitated not through formal recruitment agencies but through informal social networks: neighbours, friends, relatives, and community contacts. While these routes shorten the path to employment, they also strip away protection.
According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), most Basotho women migrants end up in unskilled, informal roles such as domestic service, where written contracts are rare, wages are negotiated verbally, and workers depend entirely on a single household for income, shelter, and legal safety. That dependence heightens vulnerability, particularly for undocumented workers who fear dismissal, non-payment, or deportation.
Speaking to the Agency, one woman in her early 40s began domestic work in Maseru as a teenager after completing Standard 7. Her parents could not afford school fees and encouraged her to find work to meet her basic needs. Through a neighbour, she became a nanny and housekeeper.
“I had to leave Lesotho because the woman’s treatment was bad,” she said. “She knew my situation at home and took advantage of it. She wanted to give my wages to my parents, not to me.”
She later migrated to South Africa and has worked for five households over nearly two decades. In Lesotho, she earned as little as M150 a month back in 2004 at the age of 17; in Gauteng, she now earns about M2,800.
Each job, she said, followed a familiar pattern: initial understanding, coupled with expanding duties, denial of rest days, and growing hostility once she became settled.
“Our understanding was always short-lived,” she said. “Once I got comfortable and knew people, it became a problem. I was never given time off, but I stayed because I needed the money.”
Marriage and motherhood complicated her choices further. Unable to remain a stay-at-home mother and later separated from her husband, she continued working. In one household, she left after discovering used toilet paper deliberately placed on a bed she had to make. In another, she endured weeks of verbal abuse after being forced to wash towels used by her employer and her partner after intimacy.
Despite the humiliation, domestic work allowed her to educate her children. “Sometimes after being paid, I leave myself with just M100 for cosmetics so my children can have everything they need,” she said. “It’s very painful to go home empty-handed after working for someone for years.”
She plans to leave domestic work later this year to start a small business and says she will never work as a housekeeper again. “There should be contracts,” she said. “Rules change along the way, but the money never does.”
In Qacha’s Nek, an 18-year-old domestic worker from Thaba-Tseka described caring for three children, including a 12-year-old living with cerebral palsy, “as difficult”. She was recruited through a neighbour and left her own two-year-old child behind.
“I was not told the truth about the job,” she said. “Had I known, I would never have agreed.” Her employer sometimes leaves for weeks at a time, leaving her without food. With no training and limited supplies, she improvises care having to feed children pap mixed with water and sugar.
“Sometimes he loses consciousness and every time, it’s scary,” she said. “I don’t know what I am doing, but I do it anyway because I need the money.”
Advocates say such experiences are far from isolated. Martha Mosoang-Ocran, founder of the Kopanang Domestic Workers Association of Lesotho, describes domestic work as “deeply systemic” in its challenges. Chief among them is the lack of written contracts. “Most domestic workers start on verbal agreements. Salaries are very low, sometimes not paid at all. Some employers even hire relatives and refuse payment, saying food is enough,” she explained.
Long hours, insufficient protections, and limited benefits compound the problem. “By law, workers are entitled to eight-hour workdays and mandated rest periods,” Martha said, “but domestic workers start at 4 or 5 a.m. and only rest after everyone else is asleep.” Protective clothing is rare, public holidays and leave days are ignored, and women are often dismissed when pregnant or sick, despite legal provisions.
Training gaps further entrench vulnerability. She said domestic work spans household roles from cooking and cleaning to caring for children, the elderly, and people with disabilities, but workers often receive no instruction. “We take it for granted that they know what to do,” she said. “Sometimes they don’t know how to use an iron safely, which can cause serious accidents.” Without opportunities to develop skills, workers remain trapped in low-paid, insecure employment.
Gendered discrimination is stark. She said women are taken for granted, especially regarding pay. “Even when money is available, women are paid less than men doing less demanding work,” she said. Sexual abuse is another common danger, particularly in South Africa, where migrant workers risk underpayment, loss of documents, or deportation. Martha’s association advises workers never to hand over their passports.
Despite legal recognition under Lesotho’s Labour Act of 2024 and a minimum wage of M872 set by Legal Notice No. 27, enforcement is weak. Martha emphasised that attitudes matter as much as laws. “Domestic workers are treated as if they are not human, even when the law specifies pay and protections.”
She advocates actionable solutions such as unionisation and formalisation of domestic work under International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention 189, ratification and domestication of laws protecting women, and bilateral labour agreements akin to those historically protecting Basotho miners in South Africa.
Through training supported by IOM, she said domestic workers now learn about contracts, their rights abroad, and protections against trafficking, sexual abuse, or child labour. Counselling services are also provided locally to support victims. “Women should receive the same protections as men, whether working locally or abroad,” Martha said, framing a vision for recognition, safety, and dignity in the sector.
Labour law consultant Advocate Shafiq Isaacs describes Lesotho’s 2024 Labour Law as a welcome step forward, formally recognising domestic workers and defining their responsibilities. “Previously, domestic workers were invisible under the law. There were no job descriptions, no protections, and no clear path for recourse when they were dismissed,” he said.
Yet, he said legal recognition alone does not resolve the sector’s systemic problems. “The law treats domestic work as temporary, even when someone works for five, ten, or more years. The only entitlement is severance pay. Social security is excluded, and without contracts, there is no job security.”
He said migrant workers face similar vulnerabilities abroad. “Even in South Africa’s formal sector, domestic workers can struggle with contracts, pay, and employment rights.” The Act includes provisions for gender-based violence and harassment, but enforcement remains uneven.
“Reporting abuse is risky when workers fear losing their jobs, and inspection capacity is limited. Employers, employees, and government all share responsibility, but currently enforcement is weak, and awareness of rights is low,” he said.
Advocate Isaacs emphasises the need to professionalise domestic work. “These workers handle highly personal and sensitive tasks, yet they receive little training. They should be taught confidentiality, ethics, and technical skills,” he explained, suggesting that domestic work could even be included as a course in technical schools to provide formal qualifications. “Professional recognition would create standards, reduce abuse, and elevate the sector beyond informal labour.”
He also advocates practical solutions for cross-border employment such as clear contracts, enforceable rights, and awareness of legal protections, particularly for migrant workers. “Formal structures allow workers to report violations to authorities, claim benefits, and protect themselves legally,” he said.
Lerato Nts’ekhe, Executive Director of the Migrant Workers Association of Lesotho, says domestic work remains undervalued and largely unprofessionally categorised. “The Labour Act focuses on factories, security, and construction, but domestic workers are treated as general workers. There are no contracts, no formal job descriptions, and recruitment is mostly informal,” he said.
Informal recruitment, sometimes through social media, he said exposes workers to exploitation, including illegal fees. “Until domestic work is formalized, abuse will continue,” Nts’ekhe warned.
He is candid about why progress has been slow. “Some stakeholders, including employers and even officials, resist formalising domestic work because they benefit from the current system. The moment the sector becomes structured, they would lose certain advantages. That is why little gets done despite advocacy efforts,” he said.
Nevertheless, the association continues to push for reform. “We are working to ensure domestic workers have contracts, clear rights, and protection from exploitative recruitment practices.’’ Professionalisation, he said, “would reduce abuse, give workers legal recourse, and ensure their work is recognised and respected.”
Efforts by the Agency to engage the Ministry of Labour and Employment were largely unsuccessful.
Migration data help explain why women continue to take such risks. According to the IOM, more than 179,000 Basotho currently work in South Africa, largely in informal domestic roles.
When male mining jobs collapsed from roughly 100,000 in 1990 to about 40,500 by 2006, women increasingly became primary earners, stepping into the economic breach. In 2023, remittances reached US$485 million, nearly 23 percent of Lesotho’s GDP making the country one of Africa’s most remittance-dependent economies.
Yet the gendered nature of this labour is stark. Research by UN-INSTRAW and SAIIA shows that migrant women earn significantly less than men: about R2,929 per month in domestic work, compared to R5,500 for men in mining.
Despite earning less, women remit between 60 and 80 percent of their income, largely covering food and school fees while men’s remittances are typically lower and more often invested in livestock or property.
At home, parents especially grandparents absorb the social costs, raising grandchildren and managing the emotional strain of long separations and inconsistent income.
Globally, domestic work is one of the most gendered and under-protected sectors. The ILO estimates that women make up the vast majority of the world’s 75 million domestic workers, more than 80 percent of whom are informally employed, without contracts, social security, or effective labour inspections. Basotho women’s experiences mirror this global pattern: their labour is undervalued, informal, and largely invisible, yet it sustains households and the national economy alike.
Until the sector is formally recognised, regulated, and respected, Basotho women will continue to pay the price for survival through insecurity, separation, and silence. Their labour is not invisible because it does not matter; it is invisible because the systems that depend on it refuse to see it.
Ends/MAPM/ml