It has taken years of gruesome cases of sexual torture and molestation for the Indian government to come up with a set of norms to protect the interests of female domestic workers. These women leave their homes every year in hordes so that their families back home are able to make ends meet with their remittances. While the men-folk, particularly from the southern states, join the labour force in the oil-rich middle-eastern states, the women work as domestic help throughout the country; yet the more progressive southern states of Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu (with higher levels of literacy) have seen large-scale economic migration of women beyond India's borders. And it is these women who suffer the consequences of such illegal trafficking in the form of sexual abuse.

The infamous case of the torture of a young girl from Orissa by her Indian diplomat employer, who had taken her to France for domestic help, caused much embarrassment to the Indian authorities back home when she had to be rescued and sheltered by the French police. A similar case was reported with regard to a Kuwaiti diplomat posted in the United States (PDF). Nepali domestic maids traveling through India on their way to the Gulf nations also suffer similar abuse at the hands of their agents—both in India as well as in their countries of destination, if they make it there at all. What places them at the mercy of these "agents" is the fact that a tremendous amount of financial expenditure—a substantial portion of which lines the pockets of these middlemen—goes into acquiring a visa, passport, ticket and other travel requirements; "buying" the chance to travel to these lands of opportunity subsequently pushes the family deeper into the debt quagmire. Economic compulsions are behind many of these women's decisions to travel abroad for work—many of whom would not have even previously traveled beyond their villages—both of which increase the scope for exploitation.

The controversial ban on bars/nightclubs in the city of Mumbai (a case that is pending in the Indian Courts) has had a similar effect of forcing many women who initially worked as bar dancers to now cross shores illegally or under the garb of domestic workers and nightclub dancers, only to find themselves forced to into abusive situations, including sex work.

The critical injuries (a broken back and multiple fractures) suffered by an Indian housemaid from Andhra Pradesh, in Bahrain recently after she jumped from the third floor of an apartment building to escape an abusive employer is not an isolated case. A few years back, a 47-year-old maid from Andhra hanged herself for similar reasons. At around the same time (in 2003) a 28-year-old Indian domestic worker was hospitalized after enduring three months of abuse at the hands of her employer. The conditions are no better for other South Asian expatriate women workers as only last year a Bangladeshi woman working in the UAE as a domestic servant was thrown from a fourth-floor balcony by her five Bangladeshi traffickers on her refusal to work as a prostitute. The near isolated nature of the work is what allows the abuse to persist since, as migrants with limited access to the outside world, they are unable to build support systems for themselves.

Despite substantial sums of money being remitted back to the country by the six million Indian expatriates working in the Gulf states, both workers' associations and human rights groups consistently report a maltreatment of these migrant workers with cases of sexual abuse registering a steep rise in recent years. According to official estimates around half a million (5.5 lakh) people leave India annually for work, while unofficial estimates peg it at two million. Recruited as nurses and maids on the surface, their future depends on the agents who are the conduits for their passage.

These phenomena are common to many South Asian countries with limited or no job opportunities; one in every 19 Sri Lankans work abroad, nearly 600,000 as housemaids, earning it the sobriquet of "country of housemaids" in Saudi Arabia. Pregnancies from rape, illicit human trafficking schemes, prostitution or other abuse induce premature return to their own country.

To increase women's sense of preparedness for working abroad, the Ministry of Women and Child Development has teamed up with an Indian tobacco and hospitality company and the Red Cross to train these women so that they are better equipped and more confident in their dealings with both the middlemen (who are the first rung of exploiters) as well as the employers. According to the Minister, in an attempt to keep track of those leaving India, the women will be accredited with the ministry and compulsory remittances to their provident fund account in India will assist in the process of maintaining a profile on them.

Recently the government banned women below 30 from seeking employment as housemaids or domestic workers in countries where the emigration clearance is demanded. The only "exception" to the case would be made for women who return to India on leave and express a wish to return to their employers. With poverty and indebtedness as the primary reasons for these women to move so far away, it is unlikely that they would willingly give up lucrative jobs. While there are extreme cases of women unable to return home because their employers confiscated their passports, the fact that women return to their unsafe work environments very often has more to do with their economic situation back home than with the "good behaviour" of the employer. Additionally, the ministry would need to take into account that the instances of sexual and physical abuse are not restricted to only certain countries. With the vulnerability of women to sex crimes a reality even in situations which are more familiar, their defencelessness becomes particularly poignant in places where they barely know the language.