The kind of work they do, and at low cost, makes household owners think twice before dismissing them. Migrants working in the sex sector are most often women, and whether they are in a regular or irregular situation, they are the most vulnerable of all. Working girls More than three out of five of the world's working children are found in Asian developing countries - 153 million, and 46 percent are girls. If household work were fully taken into account, the number of working girls would be still higher. The Asian crisis starting in mid-1997 is generally believed to have pushed more girls and boys out of school and into work.
Poverty is the cause of child labour, and it is thought that it disappears as incomes rise.
Depending on the extent to which boys are favoured when it comes to schooling and the prevailing sexual division of labour, girls may outnumber boys in agriculture and in services. Girls are highly vulnerable to physical or emotional harassment and abuse, particularly where they are led into commercial sex work or work in private households. Working children miss school and training. Thereby, they tend to have low productivity jobs and are destined to remain in that type of work in the future, their families will have low incomes, and their countries will be relegated to the bottom rungs of the international division of labour. Human trafficking The trafficking of women, as well as boys and girls, is a phenomenon in many parts of the world.