ABSTRACT
The Indian female migration to the region is also not new (see Leonard, 2002). The migration of nannies and tutors from certain regions in India, like Goa, began from the time of the British rule. The size and composition of the female migrant population of Indian nationality have increased and expanded to diversified sectors today, essentially in the service industry. The domestic work sector is predominant, and it significantly picked up since the 1980s (male domestic workers also exist, for example, as drivers and cooks). An estimate puts the number of migrant domestic workers in the GCC countries at 2.4 million (ITUC, 2014). Health care and education are the most popular professional sectors that typically have expatriate women. Indians are prominent as doctors, as nurses in particular and as related-support
staff in the health care market across the Gulf region. The migration of Indian nurses to the region has been an early and a sustained phenomenon (see Percot, 2006; Percot and Rajan, 2007). The women are also in other sectors like entertainment and hospitality and in service occupations such as hairdressing. Many secretarial/administrative jobs in the GCC continue to engage the spouses of the Indian professionals working there, although somewhat informally because of the local restrictions to work. Bahrain, for instance, permits them to work as teachers, as medical professionals and in top managerial positions in the banking sector.1
