The phenomenon of domestic servants in the State of Qatar

Abstract

Of new phenomena that emerged in the State of Qatar, and on a large scale in the post-oil era (after 1950) is domestic servant's phenomenon. Historically, the phenomenon was presented in the pre-oil and limited to the homes of the royal families, pearls' merchants, senior traders and tribal leaders. However, today the phenomenon exists in all Qatari families, under the name of maids, drivers, educators, nurses and others, recently; it began spreading in non-citizenship families as well. Based on the results of the general census of the State of Qatar (2010), the number of house servants reached 200 thousand, from different nationalities, mostly, India, Philippine, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Nepal. This paper aims to recognize the status of the phenomenon of domestic servants in Qatar, to what extent it is spreading in families, the characteristics of these families such as income and educational level, and what difficulties families are facing with this phenomenon. According to the criticism from local and international people, the research is also measuring to how extent the society is accepting the alternatives provided in order to prevent the problems created. In addition to outsourcing of scientific research and data available describing and analyzing the problem, a questionnaire has been prepared to achieve the goals and purposes of this paper. It contains more than 50 questions covering all dimensions to be tested, and have been distributed to the appropriate ratio of different categorized families in the Qatari society.