This paper outlines why the market for migrant domestic workers exists and where legal protection of these workers is lacking. While women entered the workforce in greater numbers throughout the 1900s, the distribution of domestic tasks remains weighted toward women. Working women may delegate these domestic tasks to other women, hiring domestic workers to either replace or complement gender-based roles. Domestic work is identified as one of the major forces driving international female labour migration, offering wages higher than that available in the home country and not requiring high skills. The author identifies factors that prevent legal protection for domestic workers as being (1) perceptions about housework, (2) nature of the employer-employee relationship, and (3) existence of domestic work between the public and private spheres. The author calls on increased protection at the national level to support existing international law working against the marginalization and exploitation of migrant domestic workers. This process of protection should begin with combatting silence and conformity in the domestic work sector.