Fitri Lestari
Legal Fellow
Delasari Krisda Putri
Legal Fellow
To read part one of this two-part blog post, click here.
The Gendered Impact of Climate Change
The climate crisis is not “gender neutral.” It disproportionately impacts women, as gender roles and social norms in the patriarchal system often make women the primary caregivers for families and communities. This expectation frequently extends to environmental stewardship, where women play vital roles in maintaining household resources and caring for local ecosystems.
As climate change disrupts these environments, women are among the first to experience its impacts due to existing gender inequalities, including those living in agricultural and rural areas where the degradation of natural resources affects their daily responsibilities. Women are uprooted from their sources of livelihood, including the land and plants essential for meeting daily family needs, which leads to job loss, impoverishment, and insecurity.
Gender-based violence, harassment, discrimination, and abuse are prevalent in the domestic work sector, and these risks are heightened not only during crises but also persist and even escalate in their aftermath, leaving women in increasingly vulnerable situations.
With the intensifying climate and care crises leading to deeper poverty, and increased domestic gender-based violence, including facing the structural challenge of gender inequalities, more women are seeking safe spaces outside their homes and turning to domestic work, whether in urban areas or abroad. Yet, the vulnerabilities they face in this sector go beyond economic instability. Gender-based violence, harassment, discrimination, and abuse are prevalent in the domestic work sector, and these risks are heightened not only during climate crises but also persist and even escalate in their aftermath, leaving women in increasingly vulnerable situations.
Rise in Gender-based Violence
Gender-based violence against domestic workers—including economic, physical, sexual, and psychological abuse—also intensified, threatening domestic workers’ well-being and safety. This violence increases their vulnerability to becoming new persons with disabilities as they already endured previous trauma. Locked and isolated in their employer’s homes, many workers were unable to leave to report abuse. This constant pressure led to physical exhaustion and took a toll on their mental health, increasing feelings of anxiety and depression.
Gender-based violence against domestic workers—including economic, physical, sexual, and psychological abuse—also intensified, threatening their well-being and safety.’’
Forced Migration Due to Climate Change and Poverty
Climate-induced disasters, such as floods, droughts, and rising sea levels, displace entire communities. In Indonesia, one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world, rural and coastal women are particularly affected. This is particularly true in East Nusa Tenggara and West Nusa Tenggara where agricultural productivity is declining. As their livelihoods become unsustainable, and with issues like child marriage, and domestic and sexual gender-based violence persisting, many women are compelled to migrate, seeking employment as domestic workers in countries like Malaysia, Singapore, and Saudi Arabia.
Driven by poverty and the desire to provide a better future for their families, they embark on dangerous journeys. Many women become primary breadwinners, hoping to earn enough to support their children’s education and ensure economic stability. However, they frequently fall prey to human traffickers who lure them with false promises of high salaries and safe working conditions, often exploiting cultural or religious affinities, such as those in Malaysia and Saudi Arabia. Further, while working as migrants abroad, they face multiple forms of and overlapping vulnerabilities: discrimination, xenophobia, statelessness, exploitation, sexual gender-based violence, human trafficking, and modern slavery.
“I went to Saudi Arabia to work as a babysitter after meeting someone claiming to be an official agent. Instead, I was forced into unpaid/wage theft domestic labour,” recounted a survivor of human trafficking who worked without receiving a salary in Saudi Arabia.
Despite these risks and two decades of advocacy by civil society organisations, the Government of Indonesia has not passed the Bill on the Protection of Domestic Workers (RUU PPRT), leaving them exposed to compounded risks. Nor has the international community taken the necessary actions to address and mitigate the climate crises-related risks and disproportionate harms felt by domestic workers.
The Need for Global Policy Responses
The climate crisis is not only an environmental issue but also a human rights crisis for domestic workers, particularly for women migrant workers. The intersection of the climate crisis and labour exploitation creates extremely vulnerable situations for these individuals.
To address this, governments must adopt the gender equality and human rights perspective when developing, implementing, and evaluating climate change and environmental degradation policies and actions. This means ensuring that domestic workers are included in disaster preparedness and relief efforts, ensuring their safety, security, social protection, and fair compensation during and after climate-induced disasters.
Therefore, in this case, the Government of Indonesia must prioritise the Bill of Climate Justice that upholds a gender-responsive perspective, which includes several measures to prevent environmental degradation and social inequality, and also must ratify the Bill of Protection of Domestic Workers and ILO Convention 189. Moreover, the government should also adopt essential protection measures that ensure their safety and well-being as they navigate forced migration, human trafficking, and modern slavery by recognising care work as skilled work.
At the international and regional levels, United Nations agencies, international organisations, and regional bodies such as ASEAN also play a crucial role in establishing and enforcing policies that uphold the rights of domestic workers, regardless of their location. Thus, they must collaborate to address the intersections of gender equality, care work, and climate change with civil society, domestic workers, and migrant worker unions, including these communities.
Collective action is essential to overcome the structural challenges of gender inequality and to place the care of people and the planet at the centre of sustainable development efforts
By working together in multi-stakeholder cooperation’s, they can strengthen the evidence-based research to inform government policies, raise awareness of the impacts of environmental degradation on domestic work, and advocate for gender-responsive climate strategies, ensuring that women’s contributions and vulnerabilities are recognised in global climate solutions. Collective action is essential to overcome the structural challenges of gender inequality and to place the care of people and the planet at the centre of sustainable development efforts.
In the face of a rapidly changing climate, the protection of Indonesian domestic workers’ rights including migrant workers’ rights and their well-being has never been more urgent. Governments, international organisations, and civil society must collaborate to implement comprehensive protections, recognising that the climate crisis is not just an environmental issue—it is a human rights issue.
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