DOHA, Qatar

LAST year, Theresa M. Dantes signed a contract with an employment agency in the Philippines to come here to work as a housemaid for $400 a month, plus room and board. But when she arrived, her employer said he would pay her only $250. She acquiesced; her family back in Quezon City depended on her earnings.

Other surprises quickly followed. Ms. Dantes, 29, said she was fed one meal a day, leftovers from the family’s lunch: “If no leftovers, I didn’t eat.” She worked seven days a week. When she finished work in her employer’s house, she was forced to clean his mother-in-law’s house, and then his sister’s.

After eight months, Ms. Dantes tried to leave. Her boss laughed. “You can’t quit,” he told her.

Under kafala, the system that governs the working lives of every foreigner employed in Qatar, Ms. Dantes could not resign without her employer’s permission. She fled and joined 56 other women who had sought shelter at the Philippine Overseas Labor Office.

Some 1.2 million foreign workers — mostly poor Asians from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Indonesia and the Philippines — make up 94 percent of the labor force in Qatar, an absolute monarchy roughly the size of Connecticut.