Home Work Convention, 1996 (No. 177)

The Home Work Convention connects home-based labor to collective rights and women’s economic power, beyond its treatment as a private family arrangement.

The 1996 Home Work Convention addresses an employment relation often hidden by domestic space: remunerated work performed at home or another chosen location to provide an employer-specified product or service. Home work here is neither unpaid housework nor domestic service in someone else’s household.

Article 1 makes ownership of equipment or materials insufficient to exclude this work. Genuinely independent workers with the necessary autonomy fall outside the definition; employees do not automatically become homeworkers through occasional work at home. Location, contract labels and economic dependence require separate examination.

Article 4 links equal treatment to organization, nondiscrimination, occupational safety, remuneration, statutory social security, training and maternity protection. Recognizing dispersed household production as work gives claims to activities otherwise described as women’s dexterity, supplementary family income or flexibility. Appreciation alone does not supply enforceable rights.

The convention also calls for statistical inclusion where possible, safety measures, allocation of employer and intermediary responsibilities, inspection and remedies. A production chain should not lose accountability when work passes through an intermediary or enters a home. Yet the instrument does not establish universal ratification or effective implementation. Inspection must also confront privacy and practical enforceability.

Convention No. 189 on domestic workers distinguishes two forms of labor rather than making everything occurring in a home one legal category. Kergoat’s analysis of women workers and class examines how the factory/household boundary helps manufacture labor’s status and value.