"Domestic Slavery and Domestic Work in the Gold Coast (Ghana): The Invisibility of Women’s Labour"

This article locates the deep roots of the contemporary “invisibility” of domestic workers in the transition from slavery to wage labour in the Gold Coast. An understanding of the present-day condition of domestic workers requires an examination of the legacy of slavery, especially what came eventually to be called “domestic slavery”. The ambiguities in defining domestic slavery and the claim of its supposedly benevolent nature contributed to the silence behind which exploitation has been hidden and forgotten. In this article, I focus on the absences, the unsaid and the women’s invisibility.