TASHKENT, Uzbekistan — Uzbekistan’s efforts to formalise domestic work have brought hundreds of thousands of workers into official records while exposing gaps between registration and meaningful labour protection.
UN Women reported on 28 August that 260,265 people were registered as self-employed providers of domestic services, approximately 91% of them women.
Domestic workers clean homes, cook, care for children and support older or disabled people. Their labour enables other household members to participate in paid employment, yet it often takes place behind closed doors without written contracts or reliable inspection.
Uzbekistan’s 2022 Labour Code recognised domestic work. A simplified self-employment system has since allowed workers to register and potentially build a record of economic activity.
That visibility matters. Registration can support access to financial services, pension contributions and public statistics. It can also help policymakers understand the scale of a workforce previously absorbed into the informal economy.
Self-employed status, however, assumes a degree of control that many domestic workers do not possess. A cleaner or caregiver may work fixed hours in one household, follow detailed instructions and depend on a single payer while being treated legally as an independent business.
If that happens, the household can avoid obligations involving minimum wages, paid leave, working-time limits, sickness protection and dismissal. Workers may also struggle to prove harassment, withheld pay or injury because their workplace is a private residence.
Reform should distinguish genuinely independent service providers from workers whose relationship functions as employment. Simple written agreements could record duties, hours, pay, rest periods and termination conditions without creating an inaccessible bureaucracy.
Social insurance also needs to remain affordable. A formal system fails if contribution rates consume too much of a low-paid worker’s income or require digital access she does not possess.
Uzbekistan’s policy offers an important starting point because it acknowledges domestic labour as economic activity. The next stage must ensure that registration is not used to shift every risk onto the woman performing the work.
Publication of wage, contribution and dispute data would allow workers’ organisations to judge whether formalisation is improving income and security. The goal should be decent work in private homes—not merely a larger number in an administrative database.
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