Comment: Will it be a Women’s World soon? – Gulf Digital News

Comment: Will it be a Women’s World soon? – Gulf Digital News

Bahrain has an open policy and encourages trade unionism and representation of workers – even expat workers are given a voice in trade unions, unlike in many countries.

Of course, the fact is that many blue-collar workers prefer to bury their grievances for fear of losing their jobs and unless really pushed to a corner, we don’t hear of flare-ups.

Months of unpaid wages, inhumane living conditions in worker dorms or poor work conditions can lead to mass protests by workers and often, Bahrain’s Labour Ministry handles such matters with sensitivity and even-handedness.

Come May Day and social organisations inevitably organise outreach programmes for workers and connect with groups of mainly male labourers.

It is only now beginning to percolate that one group is rarely represented and that is the female worker – and especially the omnipresent domestic worker. Mainly female and almost 100 per cent expat, they live and work in a surreal middle world, where their personal lives and rights are suspended – not quite erased but not claimed either.

They leave behind their families to serve ours and do not have the right to unionise and despite vast advances in attitude towards them and

channels for legal redressal, they are still the invisible