both maternity leaves and parental and paternity leave are considerably longer in europe and in englishspeaking countries except for the united states which lags behind even by comparison with the poorer latin american countries the socioeconomic status and gender of domestic workers the great majority of whom are women are inevitably intertwined so the way in which the state addresses their labour conditions indicates the value it affords to the two types of equity any measure that improves conditions for domestic workers promotes both dimensions of equity yet in the medium and long term formalizing domestic workers labour conditions can foster collective efforts towards more institutionalized sequential and defamilializing measures