II. Background
I think the government should pay more attention to the housemaids because we are one of the leading foreign exchange earners in the country.2
—Susanthika W., age 37, first migrated at age 24, and worked as a domestic worker in Lebanon, Kuwait, and Jordan
Status of Women and Girls in Sri Lanka
While Sri Lankan women have among the highest literacy rates and highest levels of health care access in South Asia, they experience many forms of gender-based violence and gender inequality, including discrimination in economic activity. These manifestations of women’s unequal status in Sri Lanka are linked to women’s decisions to migrate.
Gender inequality manifests itself in labor force participation and earning power. In 2006, Sri Lankan women’s labor force participation was 36 percent, about half the participation rate of men (68 percent).3 Women’s unemployment rate has been more than double that of men’s for over three decades.4 Sri Lankan women earn at the lower end of the wage spectrum. Women’s estimated earned income for 2003 was half that of men, and in 2007 the International Labour Organization (ILO) characterized the gender pay gap in Sri Lanka as “rocketing.”5 Sri Lankan trade unions have reported the existence of “men’s rates” and “women’s rates” for the same work in garment factories,6 and the Sri Lankan Wages Board established different wage rates for women and men workers for work of equal value in the tobacco and cinnamon trades.7 A March 2007 study by the University of Peradeniya found that the wage gap between similarly-situated males and females at the bottom end of the wage spectrum can be as large as 33 percent in the private sector and 27 percent in the public sector.8
Most jobs available to women within Sri Lanka are low-skilled and low-paying jobs with poor working conditions. Women are concentrated in unpaid family agricultural labor, in plantation labor (tea estates), and in informal or non-unionized sectors such as factory work in garment and other labor-intensive industries within and outside export processing zones, home-based economic activities usually as subcontracted piece-rate workers, and small-scale self-employment.9 Men earn significantly higher salaries in male-dominated informal sectors, including the coconut sector, carpentry, and masonry, than women working in other informal sectors.10
Although Sri Lanka has achieved the highest literacy rates in South Asia, gender inequality manifests itself in higher education and in the poorest sectors of society. While Sri Lankan women have parity in primary school enrollments, and higher secondary school enrollment nationally, only 7 percent of women have received at least 12 years of schooling.11 Women’s enrollment in tertiary education (university level and beyond) is 69 percent of male enrollment.12 The literacy rate among women and girls is lower than that for men and boys (91 percent, compared to 95 percent), and the literacy rate among women in the tea estate sector is significantly lower at 67 percent (where it is 87 percent for men).13
Women in Sri Lanka also face obstacles to equality in the family and protection from violence. Legal reforms in past years include amendments to the penal code in 1995 modifying the rape laws to establish more equitable burden of proof and enhancing punishment for rape, and the enactment of specific legislation on domestic violence in 2005.14 However, violence against women remains a serious problem. A 2006 survey by the Ministry of Child Development and Women’s Empowerment estimated that 60 percent of women nationwide experience domestic violence.15 While the constitution prohibits gender-based discrimination, it continues under law and in practice. Marital rape is criminalized only when spouses are judicially separated. Sri Lankan divorce laws are fault-based, and since these laws do not consider cruelty and physical ill-treatment grounds for divorce, women seeking divorce from an abusive spouse often have few options available to them.16
“Push Factors” and Sri Lankan Women’s Decisions to Migrate for Work
I have built a house with the money that I have earned, given money to my son and daughter, and opened a bank account for them. My husband doesn’t have any permanent job. I take care of all of them…. The main thing is money.… I love my country…. I am crying inside my heart…. If I can solve my financial problems this time, I will never migrate again.
—Chandra Malkanthi, age 45, preparing to migrate to the Middle East as a domestic worker for the ninth time, having worked as a domestic worker in Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Oman, Kuwait, and Qatar
For many of the hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankan women migrating to work as domestic workers in the Middle East, migration is a survival strategy pursued largely out of desperation. Nearly all the migrant domestic workers Human Rights Watch interviewed cited financial necessity as a reason for their decision to migrate and said they had no option other than to migrate for work. Although many had a tenth- or twelfth-grade education, they were unemployed or underemployed in Sri Lanka before and after migrating.
A domestic worker with the family members she supported by working as a domestic worker in Saudi Arabia. With her earnings from working abroad, she built a house for her family and supported her children, husband, and other relatives.
©2007 Dushiyanthini Kanagasabapathipillai/Human Rights Watch
Women told Human Rights Watch that they migrated to build a house; purchase land; pay off family debts; escape from an abusive spouse; pay for education-related costs for their children; pay for the care of sick, unemployed, or elderly relatives; provide dowries for themselves or their children; meet their families’ daily needs for food and clothing; replace family resources depleted by an alcoholic husband; and purchase necessary equipment for micro-enterprises they planned to launch. Divorced and widowed women reported that they had to migrate for work as the primary breadwinners. Some of the factors that contribute to women’s decisions to migrate for work are gender-specific, and differ from those relating to men’s labor migration.
A significant number of migrant domestic workers we spoke to had migrated in order to purchase building materials to construct a house, and sometimes had to migrate repeatedly to do so. Asanthika W., a mother of four who had previously worked as a domestic worker in Saudi Arabia twice, said, “Now I’m going because I’m building a house. I estimate it will cost 3 lakhs [300,000 rupees, or US$2,66417] to build a normal house. Otherwise I can’t afford the materials…. We can’t earn such money in Sri Lanka, but abroad we can earn a lot of money and have a lot when we return.”18 Although education is free in Sri Lanka, many women said that local employment options were insufficient to cover the education-related costs for their school-age children. These costs include the cost of exercise books, a book bag, and transportation costs to school, totaling approximately 4,000-10,000 rupees [US$36-89] to be paid at the beginning of each school term.19
An important factor influencing women’s decisions to migrate was their inability to earn sufficient income in Sri Lanka. Although Sri Lankan women earn only US$100-140 a month as domestic workers abroad, these wages are two to ten times higher than what they can earn in Sri Lanka, assuming they can even find work. The migrant women workers Human Rights Watch interviewed reported that the jobs available to them in Sri Lanka paid extremely low wages: they said they could earn 4,000-8,000 rupees [US$36-71] a month, including overtime, in garment factories; 1,500-3,000 rupees [US$13-27] a month in a tea estate; 5,000-6,000 rupees [US$44-53] a month as a cook in a private home; 5,000 rupees [US$44] a month as an agricultural laborer; or 2,500 rupees [US$22] a month making cigarettes. Paramitha E., a 29-year-old mother of an infant, previously earned 40 dinars [US$142] a month as a domestic worker in Kuwait and now works as an agricultural laborer for only 200 rupees [US$1.78] a day.20 Selvakumari W., a 26-year-old mother of three, earned only 90 cents a day making bidis [cigarettes] in Sri Lanka before migrating to Saudi Arabia, where she earned 400 riyals [US$107] a month. She said she was so poor she had to migrate and leave behind her two-year-old daughter.21
Many of the women Human Rights Watch interviewed for this report were the sole income-earners for their families, including their extended relatives. The number of female single-headed households is 23 percent nationwide,22 and studies indicate that each migrant woman worker from Sri Lanka supports an average of five family members back home.23 In one such case, Vadivukarasi H., a 36-year-old divorced mother of two, said, “Only I am earning money in the family to look after my parents, two children, and younger sister. I sent my earnings to my father, which he used to feed five family members. I think I sent about 500,000 rupees [US$4,440] to my family.”24 Vadivukarasi H. has a sixth-grade education, and before she migrated twice to work as a domestic worker in Kuwait, she earned 1,500-2,000 rupees per month [US$13-18] as a tea plucker on a tea estate.
Some domestic workers cited their limited access to education and vocational training as a barrier to their obtaining adequate employment in Sri Lanka, and therefore a factor in their decision to migrate. Studies show that female migrants are at the lower end of the spectrum of educational qualifications.25 Fathima Razana, a 42-year-old mother of five who has worked as a domestic worker in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, said she could not find work in Sri Lanka because she has only a first-grade education: “I didn’t work in Sri Lanka. Because I didn’t complete my studies I couldn’t find work in Sri Lanka…. Without any education I can’t try for any jobs.”26
Sri Lankan Women’s Labor Migration to the Middle East
The proportion of Sri Lankan migrants who are women has increased significantly over the past 20 years, from 33 percent of departing migrants in 1986, peaking at 79 percent in 1994, and now estimated at 59 percent.27 The mass migration of Sri Lankan workers to the Middle East began in 1976, following a sharp escalation in oil prices in the oil-rich Gulf countries.28 As demand for male construction workers decreased in the 1980s, a growing percentage of Sri Lankan women migrated to the Middle East to work as domestic workers. In the 1990s, 84 percent of all migrants from Sri Lanka to the Middle East were women, most of whom were domestic workers. Remittances from Sri Lankan migrant workers working in the Middle East have grown steadily in the past three decades and, adjusted for inflation, were five times higher in 2005 than in 1980.29
Sri Lankan women’s migration is part of a global phenomenon in which over 20 million Asians are estimated to be working outside their home countries. Women comprise almost half of all migrants in Asia, and estimates suggest women have surpassed the number of male migrants in East and Southeast Asia .30 The dominance of women in transnational labor migration is particularly evident in Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and the Philippines,31 and the Middle East is a primary destination for domestic workers from these countries.32
Over 90 percent of Sri Lankan women migrating overseas, more than 660,000 women, are working as domestic workers on temporary contracts.33 Ninety-seven percent of Sri Lankan women migrating to work as domestic workers in 2005 departed for jobs in the Middle East, and 87 percent were bound for four primary destination countries: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, and the UAE.34 Less than 3 percent departed for other countries, including Cyprus, Singapore, Malaysia, the Maldives, and Hong Kong.35 In 2005, twice as many Sri Lankan women workers departed for Saudi Arabia than men, and women departing for Kuwait outnumbered men four to one.36 According to the Sri Lankan embassy in Abu Dhabi, about 70 percent of the 165,000 Sri Lankans registered in the UAE are domestic workers.37
Remittances of Sri Lankan migrant women workers’ wages are an important source of foreign exchange for the country’s economy. In 2006, migrant workers’ remittances amounted to US$2.33 billion, representing Sri Lanka’s second-highest form of foreign-exchange earnings and equivalent to over 9 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.38 Remittances are a greater source of revenue than tea exports, Sri Lanka’s second most important commodity export (after apparel), and are critical to Sri Lanka’s economic strategy for poverty reduction.39 Sri Lanka finances about 70 percent of its US$3.37 billion trade deficit by remittances from Sri Lankan migrant workers, and such remittances amount to almost twice the amount Sri Lanka receives in foreign aid and more than two-and-a-half times the amount it receives in foreign direct investment.40 In its annual report for 2006, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka highlighted “the importance of…worker remittances in achieving a desirable rate of economic growth given the limitations in raising domestic savings,” and noted that “[s]avings by Sri Lankan residents abroad by way of worker remittances helped to reduce the [external current account deficit].”41
Increasing exposure of mistreatment and abuse of Sri Lankan women workers abroad has prompted concern among both Sri Lankans and the government. Trade unions have organized around migrant workers’ rights and, as this report discusses, the government has created initiatives to begin addressing these problems.
2 Human Rights Watch interview with Susanthika W., Panadura, Sri Lanka, November 15, 2006.
3 Central Bank of Sri Lanka, Annual Report 2006 (Colombo: Central Bank of Sri Lanka, 2007), http://www.cbsl.gov.lk/pics_n_docs/10_publication/_docs/efr/annual_report/Ar2006/Content.htm (accessed September 6, 2007), p. 64.
4 In 2006, women’s unemployment rate in 2006 was 9.7 percent, while men’s was 4.7 percent. Ibid., p. 66; Asian Development Bank, Country Gender Assessment: Sri Lanka (Manila: ADB, 2004), http://www.adb.org/Documents/Reports/Country-Gender-Assessments/CGA-Women-SriLanka.pdf (accessed June 1, 2007), p. viii.
5 United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2005 (New York: UNDP, 2005), http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2005/pdf/HDR05_complete.pdf (accessed September 6, 2007), p. 300, table 25; International Labour Conference, Equality at Work: Tackling the Challenges (Geneva: ILO, 2007), http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcomm/---webdev/documents/publication/wcms_082607.pdf (accessed September 6, 2007), p. 20.
6 For example, the American Center for International Labor Solidarity reported in 2003 that in the Koggala EPZ factories male packers’ monthly salary was 1,800 rupees, while female packers received 1,525 rupees. Solidarity Center, “Justice for All: The Struggle for Worker Rights in Sri Lanka,” 2003, http://solidarity.timberlakepublishing.com/files/SriLankaFinal.pdf (accessed August 1, 2007), p. 27.
7 Ibid.
8 Dileni Gunewardena, et al., Gender Wage Gaps in Sri Lanka: Glass Ceilings or Sticky Floors? (Colombo: University of Peradeniya Department of Economics and Statistics, 2007).
9 Asian Development Bank, Country Gender Assessment: Sri Lanka, p. viii.
10 Central Bank of Sri Lanka, Annual Report 2006, p. 63, table 4.6.
11 Center for Reproductive Rights, Women of the World: Laws and Policies Affecting their Reproductive Lives, South Asia (New York: CRR, 2004), p. 228.
12 Dileni Gunewardena, “Exploring Gender Wage Differentials in Sri Lanka: A Quantile Regression Approach,” PMMA Network Session Paper, 2006, http://132.203.59.36:81/HTML/Meetings/Addis/Papers/Dileni%20Gunawardena.pdf (accessed September 6, 2007), p. 1.
13 Central Bank of Sri Lanka, Annual Report 2006, Special Statistical Appendix, table 9; Center for Reproductive Rights, Women of the World, p. 228; Centre for Women’s Research (CENWOR), Sri Lanka Shadow Report on the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (Colombo: CENWOR, 2001), http://www.iwraw-ap.org/using_cedaw/srilanka.doc (accessed September 6, 2007), p. 21.
14 Sri Lankan Penal Code, No. 2 , 1883, sections 363-364, amended by Penal Code (Amendment) Act, No.29, 2005, sections 12-13; Prevention of Domestic Violence Act, No. 34, 2005.
15 “Sri Lankan Ministry: Survey Reveals Statistics on Violence against Women,” One World South Asia, June 26, 2006, http://southasia.oneworld.net/article/view/135416/1/ (accessed September 6, 2007). See also Indrani Iriyagolle, “The Problem of Violence against Women,” Daily News (Colombo), July 19, 2003, http://www.dailynews.lk/2003/07/19/fea01.html (accessed September 6, 2007).
16 Marriage Registration Ordinance, No. 19, 1907, art. 19(2); Center for Reproductive Rights, Women of the World, p. 222.
17 At the time of writing, US$1 was worth 112.60 Sri Lankan rupees, 0.28 Kuwaiti dinars, 3.75 Saudi Arabian riyals, and 3.67 UAE dirhams.
18 Human Rights Watch interview with Asanthika W., Kurunegala, Sri Lanka, November 4, 2006.
19 Human Rights Watch interview with Erandathi P., Rambe, Sri Lanka, November 5, 2006; Human Rights Watch interview with Soida W., Kegalle, Sri Lanka, November 19, 2006; email communication from Manori Witharana to Human Rights Watch, March 16, 2007.
20 Human Rights Watch interview with Paramitha E., Rambe, Sri Lanka, November 5, 2006.
21 Human Rights Watch interview with Selvakumari W., Katunayake, Sri Lanka, November 9, 2006.
22 The number of female-headed households is estimated to be as high as two-thirds among displaced households in the conflict-affected north and east of the country. United States Agency for International Development, “Gender Assessment for USAID/Sri Lanka,” February 17, 2004, http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/cross-cutting_programs/wid/pubs/ga_srilanka.pdf (accessed July 1, 2007), pp.10-11; Nadira Gunatilleke, “Plans Afoot to Raise Women’s Participation in Politics,” Daily News (Colombo), January 31, 2003, http://www.dailynews.lk/2003/01/31/pol03.html (accessed September 6, 2007).
23 Michele Ruth Gamburd, “’Lentils There, Lentils Here!’ Sri Lankan Domestic Labour in the Middle East,” in Shirlena Huang, Brenda S.A. Yeoh and Noor Abdul Rahman, eds., Asian Women as Transnational Domestic Workers (Singapore: Marshall Cavendish, 2005), p. 94. See also S. Jayaweera, M. Dias and L. Wanasundera, Returnee Migrant Women in Two Locations in Sri Lanka (Colombo: CENWOR, 2002), p. 1; N. Weerakoon, “Sri Lanka: A Case Study for International Female Labour Migration,” in S. Sta. M. Amparita et al., eds., Legal Protection for Asian Women Migrant Workers: Strategies for Action (Philippines: Ateneo Human Rights Center, 1998), p. 109.
24 Human Rights Watch interview with Vadivukarasi H., Talawakelle, Sri Lanka, November 12, 2006.
25 Gamburd, “’Lentils There, Lentils Here!,’” in Huang, Yeoh and Rahman, eds., Asian Women as Transnational Domestic Workers, p. 96; Jayaweera, Dias and Wanasundera, Returnee Migrant Women in Two Locations in Sri Lanka, pp. 24, 55.
26 Human Rights Watch interview with Fathima Razana (real name used upon request), Attanagalla, Sri Lanka, November 8, 2006.
27 While female migration has increased since it peaked at 79 percent in 1994, male migration has increased more rapidly. Human Rights Watch, Bad Dreams: Exploitation and Abuse of Migrant Workers in Saudi Arabia, vol. 16, no. 5(E), July 2004, http://hrw.org/reports/2004/saudi0704/, p. 14; Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment, Annual Statistical Report of Foreign Employment 2005 (Battaramulla: SLBFE, 2005), p. 1; Gamburd, “’Lentils There, Lentils Here!,’” in Huang, Yeoh and Rahman, eds., Asian Women as Transnational Domestic Workers, p. 93.
28 Michele Ruth Gamburd, The Kitchen Spoon’s Handle: Transnationalism and Sri Lanka’s Migrant Housemaids (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), pp. 27, 30.
29 Calculated using the Colombo Consumer Price Index to adjust for inflation, based on figures in F. Eelens, T. Schampers and J.D. Speckmann, eds., Labour Migration to the Middle East: From Sri Lanka to the Gulf (London: Kegan Paul International, 1992); Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment, Annual Statistical Report of Foreign Employment 2005, p. 88.
30 Graeme Hugo, “Migration in the Asia-Pacific Region,” paper prepared for the Global Commission on International Migration, September 2005, http://www.gcim.org/mm/File/Regional%20Study%202.pdf (accessed September 6, 2007), p. 8; International Organization for Migration, World Migration 2005: Costs and Benefits of International Migration (Geneva: IOM, 2005), p. 109; International Labour Organization, Preventing Discrimination, Exploitation and Abuse of Women Migrant Workers: An Information Guide, Booklet 1, Introduction: Why the Focus on International Migrant Workers (Geneva: ILO, 2003), pp. 9-10.
31 Women comprised 42 percent of Indonesian migrants in 1983, and 73 percent of legal migrant workers by 2003. Women began outnumbering male migrants from the Philippines in 1992, and by 2005, over 65 per cent of the nearly 3,000 migrants leaving the Philippines every day to work abroad were women. Gamburd, The Kitchen Spoon’s Handle,p.35; Asian Migrant Centre and Migrant Forum in Asia, Asian Migrant Yearbook 2004: Migration Facts, Analysis and Issues in 2003 (Hong Kong: Asian Migrant Centre, 2004), p. 175; Asian Development Bank, Workers’ Remittance Flows in Southeast Asia (Manila: ADB, 2006), http://www.adb.org/Documents/Reports/workers-remittance/workers-remittance.pdf (accessed June 2, 2007), pp.12, 120-121; United Nations Population Fund, State of the World Population 2006, A Passage to Hope: Women and International Migration (New York: UNFPA, 2006), p. 23.
32 United Nations Population Fund, State of the World Population 2006, p. 25.
33 Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment, Annual Statistical Report of Foreign Employment 2005, pp. 5, 58.
34 Ibid., p. 11. The UAE is a federation of seven emirates: Abu Dhabi, ‘Ajman, Al Fujayrah, Dubai, Ra’s al Khaymah, Sharjah, and Umm al Qaywayn.
35 Ibid., p. 26.
36 Calculations based on statistics provided in Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment, Annual Statistical Report of Foreign Employment 2005, p. 13.
37 IRIN, “United Arab Emirates: Domestic Workers Face Abusive Employers,” July 2, 2006, http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=27089 (accessed September 6, 2007).
38 Over 57 percent of remittances in 2006 were remitted from migrants working in the Middle East, and migrant women workers contributed over 62 percent of remittances in 1999. Central Bank of Sri Lanka, Annual Report 2006, pp. 14, 85, table 87; International Organization for Migration, World Migration 2003: Managing Migration Challenges and Responses for People on the Move (Geneva: IOM, 2003), p. 17; International Labour Organization, Preventing Discrimination, Exploitation and Abuse of Women Migrant Workers, Booklet 1, p. 11.
39 Second only to earnings generated by the garment industry (US$3.08 billion), workers’ private remittances brought US$2.33 billion in foreign earnings to Sri Lanka in 2006, while tea exports brought only US$881 million in foreign earnings. Central Bank of Sri Lanka, Annual Report 2006, p. 81; Central Bank of Sri Lanka, Annual Report 2005 (Colombo: Central Bank of Sri Lanka, 2006), http://www.cbsl.gov.lk/pics_n_docs/10_publication/_docs/efr/annual_report/Ar2005/Index%20AR2005.htm (accessed September 6, 2007), p. 90, box 10.
40 Central Bank of Sri Lanka, Annual Report 2006, pp. 75, 86, 87.
41 Ibid., p. 7.