The socio-economic opportunities and constraints for female domestic workers in accessing education in jimma city, jimma zone, oromia national regional state

Abstract

Domestic workers exist everywhere and are one of the most vulnerable segments of the society. However, there is a literature shortage about the educational conditions of the domestic workers. So, the results of this finding will intend to fill this knowledge gap by finding out the socio-economic opportunities and constraints for female domestic workers in accessing education, the case of Jimma city, Oromia National regional state. The study employed cross sectional study design in time dimension and case study design based on its purpose. The research design used in this study was a qualitative approach alone. The participants of this study like interviewees, focus group discussants and key informants were selected purposively. Accordingly, seven key informants, eleven female domestic workers and three employers were interviewed. Furthermore two focus group discussions were held with female domestic workers. The number of research participants was determined based on data saturation point. The collected data was analyzed using thematic and narrative qualitative data analysis technique. The study result revealed that, the major socio-economic constraints of female domestic workers to get access to education are: low awareness of the government organization the issue concerns, the community and society in general and the employers in particular regarding the overall situations of domestic workers. Moreover, the socio-economic problems of the females’ domestic workers family in general and the female domestic workers themselves in particular were one of the constraints of female domestic workers to get access to education. Due to these reason domestic workers are vulnerable to heavy workloads, long working hours, serving more than one family even though they were hired for one, deprivation of food and sleep, denial and withholding of salaries, invasion of privacy and violence, etc. These exposed the female domestic workers to lack of opportunity to get access to education. Some of the opportunities are existence of extension(night) school program and educational material support given for very few girls domestic workers by NGOs, CBOs, FBOs, private property owners, any volunteer individuals, etc. The study also recommended that government, non-governmental organizations and society at large should work to create favorable condition that enhances female domestic workers to get access to education through introducing discussion forums by concerned bodies in order to raise the awareness regarding the over condition of domestic workers. This was hand in hand with the formulation and implementation of strict labour law (policy).