Background analysis: between missing decrees and intermediaries without safeguards, the architecture of intermediation determines the real protection of thousands of female workers.
Worldwide, 75.6 million people aged 15 and over work as domestic workers, the vast majority of whom are women. They keep households running, free others from professional time, and yet they almost entirely escape statistics, inspections, and social protection. In Tunisia, this sector offers a rare paradox: the law advances, but the market expected to apply it remains to be built.
And what if the central issue is not only the vulnerability of the workers, but the architecture of the market that places them in contact with their employers? Reading domestic work as an invisible infrastructure of the economy, whose modes of access (recruitment, intermediation, control) determine the real level of protection, provides a more operational analytical framework for policymakers as well as for actors in the social economy.
This reading is based on the policy brief “What future for domestic work in Tunisia? The role and stakes of intermediary organizations in the face of structural inequalities,” published in November 2024 by the Shanti association. Carried out within the Ferdi mentoring program within the Savoirs éco Tunisie project, funded by the European Union and implemented by Expertise France,
it cross-checks the analysis of the legal framework, documentary review and interviews conducted in 2023 with 14 domestic workers. This updated version reflects the conclusions with evolutions observed up to the end of September 2026.
An economy of care that no one has ever counted
The origin of the problem is conceptual before it is legal. Since work is defined as a paid activity that produces goods or services, everything that is performed for free in the private sphere falls outside the realm of value. The full employment of the postwar era, patterned after the male industrial worker, extended this exclusion, and the legacy of servitude did the rest.
The policy brief draws a troubling question: can domestic work be valued without first recognizing domestic work? As long as the answer remains negative, every reform starts with a deficit of consideration that a single law text cannot fill.
A 2021 law still without implementation guidelines
