‘I’ll give you a good young girl, so you can be sure she listens to you,’ the Lebanese broker tells us as he flicks through the pages of a large black book filled with photos of women. All their details are recorded: religion, height, weight, age and country of origin. ‘She will never need to leave the house without you,’ he assures us.
Posing as prospective employers looking for a maid, we have walked into a recruitment agency in Beirut. Business at the agency is brisk. Currently Lebanon, a country with a population of six million, has more than 250,000 migrant domestic workers. While Lebanese families have grown increasingly reliant on this foreign workforce, overwhelmingly composed of women, the country’s employment legislation has remained purposely unregulated, allowing the exploitative system of sponsorship known as kafala to prevail.
