Domestic workers can be broadly divided into two categories i.e., live-in and live-out domestic workers. Live-in domestic workers are those who reside in the house where they perform their work while live-out workers live outside their place of work. The other categories are full time, part time, child domestic workers, bonded/forced labour, and migrant workers including au pair. It is pertinent to mention that domestic labour, in Asia and Africa, exists also in the form of child labour and bonded/forced labour. Moreover, the au pair, initially a cultural exchange program for young people, is also a type of migrant domestic worker arrangement.

Domestic workers in Uganda are mostly girls the age of 16 and above who are hired to do domestic chores in a home. They are commonly referred to as “housemaids” or “house girls”. On rare occasions old women and “house boys” are also involved in offering this kind of labour. Other categories include drivers and other workers in farms and gardens.

A domestic worker is one who works in or for another person’s home. For a person to qualify as a domestic worker, he/she must be engaged in domestic work within an employment relationship. The term “employment relationship” excludes those persons from domestic work who;

1. Perform their work only occasionally or sporadically (such as part-time babysitters)
2. Perform the domestic work as a family responsibility (child care, elder care, etc.)

However, workers employed for the cleaning of public and private buildings and any other above-mentioned activities are not domestic workers as domestic work is a household work and is usually performed within the boundaries of a house.