Bangladeshi Women Domestic Workers’ Experiences of Intimate Labour in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Drawing on the theoretical lens of intimate labour, this paper analyses how economic security is entangled with Bangladeshi women’s paid domestic work in Saudi Arabia, where women’s bodies become contested sites of labour and gendered violence. We examine the negotiation of gendered expectations, relational dynamics, and power imbalances within Saudi Arabian home workplaces based on in-depth interviews with 18 returnee Bangladeshi women migrant domestic workers. Their stories reveal that employer-sponsored domestic work inherently produces systemic risks, severely constraining women’s capacity for actively challenging harmful work practices. We argue that economic violence constitutes the most significant form of violation experienced by these women, sustaining other forms of violence. In response to this spectrum of violence, women employ everyday acts of resistance manifested through conscious endurance, affective distance, and non-confrontational tactics to ensure their economic goals of migration. An intimate labour lens highlights that these strategies are far more than coping mechanisms—they represent a critical terrain of resistance where women strategically manage their home workplace and its relational dynamics to deal with violence in the absence of formal institutional protection.