Assessing work and health conditions of filipino domestic workers in İstanbul

Material and method: This research was planned and carried out to be cross-sectional. According to data by Filipino Community Turkey, the number of Filipino female domestic workers in Istanbul is around 1200. Upon this data set, the number of interviewees was determined to be 292 by taking into consideration the unknown prevalance (50%), pattern effect 1 and 5% error margin. A two-part questionnaire was filled out through face-to-face interviews during the leave days of the workers. In order to specify the dependent variable, quality of life, SF36 quality of life scale was used. In order to determine the independent variables such as sociodemographic factors, work conditions, abuse and future plans, a questionnaire with 20 questions was formed by using the existing literature. The relationship between the life quality of Filipino women, their demographic characteristics and work conditions was evaluated with t-test and ANOVA analysis. Findings: The SF36 scores of interviewees are the following: Physical health; 60.19±27.65, physical role functioning; 54.71±38.00, bodily pain; 68.85±20.54, general health perceptions; 65.70±17.00, vitality; 56.11±15.36, social role functioning; 62.24±17.97, emotional role functioning; 57.76±40.94, mental health; 58.60±20.50. It was understood that age, education levels, marital status, work hours, the reason for working as a domestic worker have effect the SF36 subsectors such as physical role functioning, vitality, emotional role functioning, mental health and general health perception. Work conditions and the nature of the work, the amount of responsibilities, living inhouse, private room, amount of compensation have effects on physical role functioning, vitality, mental health, general health perception and bodily pain. Whether nutrition, health insurance, clothing, education, and hygiene needs are met effects subscales such as physical role functioning, vitality, emotional role functioning, mental health, physical functioning and bodily pain. Long work hours, lack of leaves, verbal work contracts and the attitude of employers effect emotional role functioning, mental health and bodily pain. Being subjected to economical abuse such as cutting off wages, being forced to work while sick and late wages effect physical role functioning, mental health, physical functioning and bodily pain subscales. Findings: Quality of life scores were found to be low in the areas of role limitations due to physical functions (RP, 54,71), Viability (VT, 56,11), Role limitations due to Emotional problems (RE, 57,76) and Mental health (MH, 58,60). Conclusion: It has been observed that the quality of life for female Filipino domestic workers are effected by sociodemographic characteristics, work conditions and abuse. Keywords: Filipina, Women, İstanbul, Quality of Life, Domestic Worker, SF36.