Short answers, pulled from the story.
The International Labour Organization estimated there are at least 67.1 million domestic workers globally, based on surveys and censuses of 232 countries and territories. Experts believe the real number could be as high as 100 million because much of this work is hidden and unregistered. The ILO reports that 83 percent of domestic workers are women.
In July 2011, the International Labour Conference adopted the Convention Concerning Decent Work for Domestic Workers by a vote of 396 to 16. The convention recognized domestic workers as entitled to the same rights as other workers. Uruguay became the first country to ratify it on the 26th of April 2012.
Domestic workers in the United States are generally excluded from the National Labor Relations Act and many other worker protections. Historically, domestic workers and agricultural workers were deliberately excluded from New Deal legislation including Social Security, because politicians feared losing support from Southern Democrats who backed racial segregation. Domestic workers of all races were not added to Social Security coverage until 1950.
Restavek is a practice in Haiti, and similar "confiage" or entrusting arrangements exist elsewhere, in which rural parents send children to urban households to work in exchange for shelter and schooling. UNICEF considers domestic work among the lowest-status forms of child labor. Globally, at least 10 million children work in domestic labor jobs.
During the Civil Rights Movement, nearly ninety percent of Southern African American women worked as domestic workers. They boycotted buses, attempted to register to vote, and used time in jail to organize and educate other women. Their participation went largely undocumented, though historians have identified them as central to the movement's progress.
A 2008 Human Rights Watch report documented a range of abuses faced by domestic workers in Saudi Arabia, where official figures counted approximately 1.2 million household workers including drivers and gardeners. The country employed an estimated 600,000 domestic workers from Indonesia, 275,000 from Sri Lanka, and 200,000 from the Philippines. Kenya reported 274 deaths of its domestic workers in Saudi Arabia over a five-year period.