Invisible Labour

A large segment of child labour that is invisible is that of the girl child. A large number of girls are burdened with household work when both the parents go out to work. This includes work like fetching water, fuel wood, cooking, cleaning the house and looking after the younger siblings. In such cases, no law can be applied to rid the girls of their household responsibilities, and access the education and recreation facilities comparable to their affluent counterparts.

Primarily the child labour cases are related to the calls for rescue from abuse. Of the millions of calls received by CHILDLINE, about 5% of calls are reported for protection against physical, sexual or financial abuse of children. According to ChildNET (the documentation software for CHILDLINE data) out of the total calls received for abuse approximately 86% constitute for physical abuse, 6% for sexual abuse and 5% for financial abuse. For the year 2008-2009 there were 4,541 cases for protection against abuse, wherein physical abuse at workplace was highest followed by physical abuse in the family.

The ChildNET data on sexual abuse shows that out of the total cases of sexual abuse cases reported, in 74% of cases the victims are female children, and 72% of females are sexually abused at work place.