In Ecuador 200.246 women are employed as domestic workers. Despite having ratified the ILO Convention 189 (International Labor Organization) in 2014, in Ecuador only 28% of domestic workers are affiliated to the Ecuadorian Institute of Social Security (IESS, for its acronym in Spanish). Even more alarming, 80% of them report to have suffered some kind of harassment or violence at their workplace.

In Ecuador, the Equal Value, Equal Rights program works with the “National Union of Domestic Workers and Related Workers” (UNTHA, for its acronym in Spanish), who after a long process of mobilization, managed to obtain union registration in the Ecuadorian Ministry of Labor in May 2018.

UNTHA (National Union of Domestic Workers and Related Workers) is a union conformed by 135 affiliated women between the ages of 21 and 70. 70% of the affiliates are domestic workers and 30% no longer work as domestic workers but now dedicate to small enterprises. From the union’s affiliates, 60% have completed elementary school and it is estimated that the average start of their working life is from the age of 12 to 13 years. This points out that child labor is another alarming problem in the country.

Despite the fact that the Ecuadorian national labor legislation establishes the amount of $385 USD as the legal minimum wage, the average income of the affiliates ranges between $150 and $220 USD.