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.

There is no fixed wage for a domestic worker. The wage usually depends on what the employer is willing to pay or what the domestic worker is willing to accept. 

In other words, an employer can set a very small payment for a domestic worker, since there is no legal obligation thereafter. When domestic workers enter the labour market, they usually don’t know what their rights are. The minimum wage in Uganda was set in 1984 and has not been revised since then.

Domestic workers in Uganda are mostly young girls, despite the constitutional rights of children in the legal framework; child domestic workers still exist in Uganda. Contributing factors to child domestic work include, socio-economic, political (civil strife), HIV/AIDS-related due to the death of parents, and institutional/policy-related factors, cultural influences where children are discriminated against, and employers’ preference for young workers with fewer demands compared to older workers.