Is Being a Kasambahay a Choice? Inside the Quiet Realities of Domestic Work in the Philippines
In the Philippines, where the middle class is expanding and the cost of convenience rises with it, the figure of the kasambahay remains a familiar presence. She is the yaya in the park keeping pace with a toddler; the helper sweeping a gated driveway at dawn; the woman carrying bags behind a family in the mall. She is visible everywhere and understood nowhere.
And one question sits quietly beneath the surface of the work:
Is this a profession people choose — or one they enter because they have no choice at all?
The honest answer is complicated, textured, and deeply human.
For Some, Domestic Work Is a Calculated Choice
In interviews across Metro Manila — from Navotas to Caloocan, from Pasig to Parañaque — a common thread emerges: many kasambahays describe the job not as an accident, but as a strategy.
A 27-year-old yaya from Bicol explains it plainly:
“I wanted steady income. I didn’t finish school. I needed a job I could trust.”
Living in someone else’s home, she says, means she can save almost everything she earns. Food and housing are covered. The money goes straight to her daughter’s education in the province.
Others share the same reasoning. Domestic work, for them, is not a last resort. It is a rational choice in an economy with limited pathways for those without degrees or urban networks. It offers stability, predictability, and — crucially — immediate employment.
In this sense, being a kasambahay is not unlike many other working-class professions. People choose it because it provides what they need now.
But for Many Others, It Isn’t a Choice in the True Sense of the Word
To say domestic work is always chosen is to ignore the country’s geography of inequality. In rural towns and upland barangays where jobs are scarce, young women describe becoming kasambahays with the gentle finality of destiny.
“I didn’t choose,” one worker says. “There were no other options.”
This is not melodrama — it is economics.
A lack of job markets.
A lack of education.
A lack of mobility.
Responsibility at home.
Debts to pay.
Parents aging.
Siblings studying.
Domestic work fills the vacuum. It becomes the one form of labor always available, always hiring, always immediate.
Sociologists call this constrained choice: a decision made not from desire, but from necessity.
Domestic Work Is Skilled Labor — Even If It’s Not Treated That Way
Despite being undervalued, domestic work requires an architecture of skills that many households rely on but seldom acknowledge:
• Managing a child’s emotions and routines
• Cooking meals for multiple tastes
• Maintaining order in fast-paced homes
• Managing time with discipline
• Carrying the emotional weight of being “on call” inside someone else’s space
These tasks are not unskilled. They are simply unpaid according to their real difficulty — a global issue, not only a Philippine one.
And yet, for many workers, this is also where dignity is found.
“I’m proud of my work,” a longtime housekeeper in QC says. “Families trust me. Kids love me. That matters.”
What Would Real Choice Look Like?
To understand whether kasambahays truly choose their work, it’s useful to imagine what real choice would look like:
• A worker could say yes because the job fits her skills — not because it’s the only job available.
• She could say no without fear of hunger or debt.
• She could walk away from employers who treat her poorly.
• She could take rest days without guilt.
• She could negotiate wages, not simply accept them.
Choice requires alternatives — and alternatives require systems that protect workers, provide training, enforce labor laws, and expand opportunities outside of domestic work.
At the moment, those systems are uneven at best.
Between Choice and Necessity Lives the Real Story
To ask whether kasambahays choose their work is to ask the wrong question.
A more honest one might be:
How can a society ensure that every kasambahay — whether she arrived by choice or necessity — is treated with dignity, safety, and respect?
Domestic work exists because it meets the needs of families; but the people who do this work have needs of their own. They raise other people’s children while their own children grow far away. They keep homes in order while their own homes wait for remittances. They carry burdens quietly, in jobs that often exist in the blind spots of urban life.
Whether this work is chosen or simply endured depends not solely on the worker — but on the economy, the laws, the employers, and the culture that shape her world.
An Insight From MaidProvider.ph’s “Human+” Lens
Platforms like MaidProvider.ph, which uses a Human+ model that combines human insight with technology, suggest that visibility itself is part of the solution. Data from thousands of inquiries reveal a pattern too often missing in public discourse: workers consistently ask for clarity, boundaries, and fair expectations, while families ask for transparency, professionalism, and trust.
If technology has a role here, it is not to reduce domestic work to an algorithm, but to illuminate the conditions that shape it — helping both families and workers make more informed decisions. Technology cannot erase inequality, but it can make the invisible mechanics behind domestic work harder to ignore.
This essay is part of MaidProvider.ph’s Human+ series, exploring the realities shaping domestic work in the Philippines.