A/HRC/15/20* labour outstripping demand, power relationships are often so grossly unequal that the degree of exploitation endured by domestic workers depends on the employer’s will. 65. Gender discrimination marks the trajectory into domestic servitude. Families will often give preference to boys to continue their education, while girls are forced to drop out of school to help earn money for the family. Such patterns are reinforced where States fail to respect their obligation under the Convention on the Rights of the Child (art. 28) to provide free and compulsory primary education to girls and boys, while making secondary and higher education available and accessible. In some cultural contexts, there is a widespread belief that domestic work provides better training for becoming a wife and mother than formal education. 66. On the job, domestic workers are also confronted with gender-based discrimination. Stereotypical gender roles that assign domestic chores to the women of the family — who are expected to take care of them without reward, recognition or remonstration — are transposed to the professional context. This helps explain why domestic workers are often expected to be always available – notwithstanding labour standards on maximum working hours, rest days and vacation. Because domestic work was traditionally performed by female family members for free, many employers feel reticent to pay a serious salary for work they think should really cost no more than room, board and a measure of gratitude. 67. In many cultural contexts, women remain dependent on the social protection of their family. This poses an obvious problem for live-in domestic workers who do not have family close to them. Leaving the house is not an option as women living on their own are looked down upon and viewed with suspicion. 68. Stereotypes of the female domestic worker as the readily available target of sexual conquest, contribute to sexual abuse and exploitation. Control of the domestic worker’s sexuality also extends to a denial of reproductive rights: domestic workers are very often unfairly dismissed if the employer suspects them of being pregnant. Legislation in many States tacitly endorses such violations by specifically excluding domestic workers from maternity leave and other protection awarded to pregnant women. 2. Discrimination based on ethnicity, race, skin tone or caste 69. Domestic servitude is intrinsically linked to discrimination based on ethnicity, race, skin tone or caste. Imagined distinctions in human worth and dignity, derived from meaningless differences in outward appearance or lineage, set the ground for ruthless exploitation. Patterns of discrimination are internalized by both perpetrators and victims, who more or less consciously envisage themselves as “masters” or “servants”. 70. While this is most obvious with regard to the enduring patterns of domestic slavery, most domestic workers will be confronted one way or another with discrimination. During the course of her missions to Ecuador (A/HRC/15/20/Add.3) and Brazil (A/HRC/15/20/Add.4), the Special Rapporteur noted that girls of Afro-descent were far more likely to end up in domestic servitude than more light-skinned Brazilians. A study found that 69 per cent of children in domestic work in Brazil classified themselves as “black”, compared to 31 per cent who considered themselves “white”.31 71. Prejudices also reveal themselves in pay differences. Studies in Middle Eastern countries found, for instance, that Filipina migrant domestic workers are usually paid more than their more dark-skinned colleagues from South Asia or Africa.32 31 32 14 Helping Hands or Shackled Lives? Understanding child domestic labour and responses to it, p. 25. See e.g. ILO, Gender and migration in Arab States: The case of domestic workers (Beirut, Regional GE.10-15169