Written by by Amy Sood at scmp.com
- Between 1985 and 2001, only 161 women left Nepal for work, primarily in domestic care, but that figure shot up to 21,421 between 2014 and 2015
- Women who leave for overseas work via unlicensed means are more vulnerable to exploitation by illegal recruiters and abusive employers
Binita, 39, is preparing to leave her home in Nepal’s capital of Kathmandu, for the first time ever, to fly more than 3,200km (2,000 miles) to Kuwait, where she will work as a domestic worker.
“It is hard to go alone, but I’m doing this for my family. We do not have good income here, even though we work hard,” she told This Week in Asia, requesting to go by a pseudonym to protect her identity.