Sex Workers

PurposeTo discuss the gender dimension of migration and human rights, and to provide an assessment of how to improve human rights protections for migrant women workers in janitorial services and night clubs across registered and unregistered migrant women workers in North Cyprus.Design/methodology/approachA survey is done to establish the employment conditions of migrant women workers in both sectors. The conditions are evaluated to assess the compliance with North Cyprus labor and immigration legislation and international human rights protocols.FindingsRegistered and unregistered segment of the janitorial services and unregistered segment of sex industry are dominated by Turkish migrant women. The registered part of sex industry is dominated by Eastern European migrant women mostly due to the legislative framework within which these two activities operate, primarily with respect to immigration requirements and also as it pertains to the remunerative potential of activity. No eviden...

Initiatives aimed at behaviour change of key populations such as the female sex workers (FSWs) are pivotal in reducing the transmission of HIV. An 8-year implementation research to establish the predictor factors of behaviour change among FSWs in Kenya was initiated by the African Medical Research Foundation (AMREF) with Sida and DfID support. This cross-sectional survey interviewed 159 female sex workers (FSWs) identified through snowball procedure. The measurement of behaviour change was based on: the consistent use of condoms with both regular and non regular clients, reduced number of clients, routine checks for STIs, and involvement in alternative income generating activities. The adjusted odds ratios at 95% confidence interval computed during binary logistic regression analysis were used to determine the behaviour change predictor factors. Most FSWs (84%) had participated in AMREF's integrated intervention programme for at least one year and 59.1% had gone through behaviou...

The phenomenon of closing the red-light district become a huge campaign in few past years, one of the exist red-light district areas was in Sarmi-Madiun. The presence of The Female sex workers (Fsws) can't be separated from the existence of the sexual services need. Finding data on the number of people with HIV/AIDS that continued to increase until 2018 (Zuraya, 2018). It's indicates a rapid transmission of the virus. The information needs about health are an important part of Fsws, because working environment of redlight district for the Fsws have a high risk not only physically but also mentally. Socialization is one of the important things to do to process acquire the knowledge, social skills and value to conform to the norms and roles required for integration into a group or community, so the opportunity to understand the depth of the contents of the conversation with Fsws will be measurable, but these activities it's held on once in a 3 months and the rest of that just giving the contraception. The rest of the socialization for the Fsws was aimed at the group leader to share information with other members of the Fsws every day. 15 women were involved in the vortex of prostitution, some of them were on 35-40 years old which means it's the limit term of the digital immigrant generation. In-Depth Interviews were conducted to 9 informants who are the residents of in Sarmi-Madiun.

Female sex workers (FSWs) are vulnerable to violence within and beyond the workplace. Violence is associated with increased burden of HIV, possibly explained through physiologic or behavioral causal pathways. These analyses sought to determine the relationship between lifetime sexual violence with unprotected, condomless vaginal intercourse (UVI) among FSWs in West Africa. FSWs (aged ≥18 years) were recruited into a cross-sectional study through respondent-driven sampling in two West African countries, Togo and Burkina Faso. A total of 1380 participants were enrolled from January to July 2013, and completed a sociobehavioral questionnaire and HIV testing. Measures included sex work history, lifetime experiences of violence victimization, sexual practices, and UVI (past month). Crude and adjusted robust log binomial regression was conducted to estimate prevalence ratios (PrR) as a measure of association between UVI with clients and the primary exposure, forced sex. Self-reported life...

The 1975 French sex workers’ strike is widely acknowledged by sex workers’ movement activists as the spark that ignited the contemporary European sex workers’ rights movement. Yet, significant scholarly research has judged the strike a failure because it neither achieved law reform, nor was it able to sustain a lasting presence. How then should we understand the disparity between how sex worker activists see the occupation and the judgment of academic researchers? This research extends the analytical frame of the 1975 movement’s influence beyond the disappointment of specific policy outcomes and instead addresses the role that the movement played in challenging attitudes towards sex workers, and building a new collective identity that fed into the emerging global sex workers’ rights movement. It argues that by defining and amplifying a set of shared grievances recognisable across borders the strike was a significant cultural achievement for the sex workers’ movement and this in turn established a narrative of influence.

This study evaluated a brief human rights-focused HIV community mobilization intervention for sex workers in the Philippines, a country with one of the fastest rising number of HIV cases worldwide. Five single-session group interventions to reduce sexual risk and increase HIV testing among 86 sex workers in Manila were evaluated with pre-post-test data via Wilcoxon's signed-ranks and Mann-Whitney tests. The 4-h intervention, Kapihan (August-November, 2013), integrated human rights with HIV skill-building. Demographic data, violence/trafficking victimization, human rights knowledge, and intentions to HIV test and treat were collected. Participants were median aged 23; female (69 %); had children (55; 22 % had 3+ children); used drugs (past 3 months: 16 %); sexually/physically abused by clients (66 %); 20 % street sex workers ever took an HIV test. Pre-post-test scores significantly improved in knowledge of HIV (z = -8.895, p < 0.001), reproductive health (z = -3.850, p < 0....

HIV incidence in the Philippines is increasing at an alarming rate. We conducted this study to understand the factors catalyzing the HIV epidemic among men having sex with men (MSM) in Metro Manila. From November 2009 to January 2010, an HIV testing booth was set up adjacent to bars and restaurants in Metro Manila frequented by MSM at night. Participants aged > or =18 years were interviewed using a structured questionnaire. Rapid HIV antibody screening was performed using SD Bioline HIV 1/2 3.0 (Standard Diagnostics). Of 406 MSM included in the study, the mean age was 26.2 years [standard deviation (SD) 5.4]; 96% believed condoms reduced HIV risk but only 3% reported consistent use. The leading reasons for not using condoms were belief that the partner was HIV negative (34.4%), diminished pleasure (32%), and unavailability (23.4%). The HIV prevalence using the rapid test was 11.8% [95% confidence interval (CI): 8.7- 15.0]. All 40 cases who had a confirmatory Western blot test wer...

This study evaluated a brief human rights-focused HIV community mobilization intervention for sex workers in the Philippines, a country with one of the fastest rising number of HIV cases worldwide. Five single-session group interventions to reduce sexual risk and increase HIV testing among 86 sex workers in Manila were evaluated with pre-post-test data via Wilcoxon's signed-ranks and Mann-Whitney tests. The 4-h intervention, Kapihan (August-November, 2013), integrated human rights with HIV skill-building. Demographic data, violence/trafficking victimization, human rights knowledge, and intentions to HIV test and treat were collected. Participants were median aged 23; female (69 %); had children (55; 22 % had 3+ children); used drugs (past 3 months: 16 %); sexually/physically abused by clients (66 %); 20 % street sex workers ever took an HIV test. Pre-post-test scores significantly improved in knowledge of HIV (z = -8.895, p < 0.001), reproductive health (z = -3.850, p < 0....

Siegmann argues that as the ILO celebrates its centenary this year, ‘the international organisation for labour rights protection has yet to come out as an advocate for decent work for sex workers.’ This means that the organisation will have to change its perspective of seeing ‘sex work as an occupation that it considers harmful for children as well as involving a high risk of forced labour and HIV infection.’ For Siegmann, the ILO has to engage the various struggles by sex workers and activists who have demanded recognition of sex work as work, labour rights equal to workers in other industries, freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining.

Hungary is a major player in the European sex trade, not only as a host country for sex tourism and domestic punters, but also as a major provider of the labour force that works in western European countries. The scarcer the economic opportunities in a region, the more likely locals are to enter the trade and end up either providing or managing sexual services far from home. A vicious cycle of destitution locks large numbers of Hungarian women into sex work. Moving to western Europe to avoid prosecution, their vulnerability and isolation only increases.

Este documento desarrolla una mirada innovadora a la prevención del VIH/SIDA hace parte de una colección que pretendió dar una mirada diferencial a la ocurrencia de la epidemia, basándose en una perspectiva de derechos que entidiende que la vulneración de éstos es un factor preponderante en el desarrollo de la epidemia.

In 2003 New Zealand passed the Prostitution Reform Act, decriminalising sex work and associated activities. This thesis examines news media representations of sex work and workers from 2010 to 2016 to determine how these texts construct sex work in a postdecriminalisation environment. The key questions this thesis considers are: which sex workers are presented by journalists as acceptable, and what conditions are attached to that acceptability? Using media studies frameworks to analyse the texts, this thesis demonstrates that in a decrimininalised environment the media plays a regulatory role, with the power to dictate what modes of sex work are acceptable largely shifting away from the courts. In the absence of a debate about the il/legality of sex work, a different kind of binaristic construction emerges, frequently related to public visibility or invisibility. 

This thesis uses discourse analysis techniques to examine texts relating to three key media events: the repeated attempts legally restrict where street sex workers could work in South Auckland, texts about migrant sex workers around the time of the Rugby World Cup, and texts about independent or agency-based sex workers. My methodology involved examining the texts to establish who was situated as an expert through discourse representation, what words were used to describe sex workers and their jobs, and then discerning what narratives recurred in the texts about each event.

My analysis indicates that in a decriminalised environment news media representations of sex work afford acceptability to those who are less affected by structural oppressions: predominantly young, white, cisgendered, middle or upper-class women who see few clients and work indoors. However, for workers who fall outside these bounds news reports continue to reproduce existing sex work stigma. I highlight how racism and transmisogyny frequently play into news representations of sex work, even under a framework of decriminalisation, in ways that serve to avoid acknowledging the work of (some) sex workers as legitimate labour, and how transmisogyny is used in attempts to exert and justify bodily control over sex workers. By considering how these representations function to undermine the legitimacy of the work, this thesis demonstrates the ways news media functions as a site at which stigma about sex work is produced, reinforced, or validated for a non-sex working audience.

Additionally, this thesis argues that the ways acceptable sex work is produced are predicated on agency and independent workers’ performance of choice and enjoyment, requiring the actual labour involved in sex work to be obscured or minimised. This obfuscation of the “work” of sex work makes it more difficult to advocate for improved employment rights and conditions, which is heightened due to the advertorial function of some news media texts. Furthermore, the ways in which sex workers’ narratives are constructed is also indicative of which workers are or are not acceptable: only certain workers are permitted to speak for themselves, and frequently only when their accounts are supported by other, non-sex working, voices.

This thesis therefore concludes that while news media represents some limited forms of sex work as acceptable, the ways in which this is discursively achieved restrict the ability of workers to self-advocate. Furthermore, even workers represented as acceptable are in a precarious position, with this acceptability being mediated by their ability or willingness to adhere to specific, heteronormatively mediated, identity categories, and to inhabit a specific enthusiasm in their voiced feelings about their work.

In recent years, Ireland has seen the emergence of a well-organised campaign to introduce legislation that criminalises the purchase, but not the sale, of sexual services. While a domestic consensus has seemingly formed in favour of client criminalisation, global health and human rights bodies have increasingly taken a contrary position: that neither party to a commercial sex transaction should be criminalised, at least where the parties are adults and the exchange takes place on a voluntary basis.

This paper sets out the international legal basis for this alternative consensus among actors in the international health and human rights sectors. It argues against client criminalisation from a human rights perspective, focusing on sex workers' right to health. After a brief introduction to the right to health in international law, it sets out various elements of the right to health that are implicated in the proposal to criminalise sex workers' clients. Using examples from research in countries that penalise the purchase of sex - directly or indirectly - it shows how these laws may jeopardise the health of sex workers in a number of ways, impairing their right to health under international law. It considers and rebuts the argument that client criminalisation actually promotes the right to health, showing this to rest on unsupportable ideological assumptions and flawed interpretations of human rights law. Finally, it briefly examines an alternative model - that of New Zealand, in which neither sex workers nor their clients are criminalised, and sex work is treated as a form of labour.

This paper is thus organized in four substantive sections: Transcript Text Analysis, Interpretive Analysis of the Hearing Process, Presentation and Analysis of Qualitative Survey Results, and Kerry’s Personal Reflections. Briefly, our analysis reveals significant levels of partisanship during the hearings, especially on the part of Conservative Party committee members, and the use of ideology rather than evidence by witnesses supporting the bill. Our analysis also reveals that witnesses against the bill felt disrespected and marginalized during the hearings, and our qualitative and quantitative evidence confirms their experiences. We conclude the paper with recommendations for the sex worker rights community’s next steps toward law reform in Canada.

El debate sobre la prostitución está mediáticamente copado por posturas simplistas y criminalizantes que, desde un punto de vista moralista, puritano y excluyente, niegan la palabra a las trabajadoras sexuales y, por lo tanto, impiden cualquier debate que atienda a las complejidades materiales y sociales que atraviesan esta cuestión. En este contexto, este libro resulta doblemente necesario. Justificaría su valor el que lo hayan escrito trabajadoras sexuales y que se base en la labor militante y en la experiencia de los colectivos de trabajadoras sexuales de todo el mundo. Pero su mayor virtud reside en que nunca pierde de vista el eje y la meta sobre la que deben articularse todas las políticas y las discusiones sobre la prostitución: las vidas, los derechos y el bienestar de las personas que se dedican al trabajo sexual.

En este sentido, hablar desde la defensa de la vida y el bienestar de las personas que se dedican al trabajo sexual supone hablar de las realidades que conforman su existencia: sexo, trabajo, pobreza, migración, fronteras, racismo, sexismo, transfobia, así como de las consecuencias que cada uno de los modelos de regulación legal de la prostitución tienen para su supervivencia y su seguridad. Por esta perspectiva poliédrica, compleja y a partir de la experiencia militante, Putas insolentes es seguramente la mejor aproximación a la controvertida cuestión del trabajo sexual publicada en castellano.

Juno Mac y Molly Smith son trabajadoras sexuales y activistas en el Sex Worker Advocacy and Resistence Movement (SWARM), literalmente Defensa de la Trabajadora Sexual y Movimiento de Resistencia. SWARM lleva años trabajando en el Reino Unido por los derechos de cualquier persona que venda servicios sexuales y por la descriminalización de ese trabajo.

Studies of male sex workers are often confined to the individual level rather than exploring their work environment per se or the larger ecological context in which their business activities are embedded. We know relatively little, for example, about the spatial location of erotic worksites (apart from street-level work) or the interactional dynamics of sellers and clients within such settings. This article presents an ethnographic study of bars and clubs in Prague and Berlin where male sexual commerce is transacted. We find important differences between the cities in the social organization of the bars and in participants' demographic characteristics. The analysis links our micro-level findings to the larger forces of labour migration and sex tourism, factors that differ between the two cases.

Growing public health attention has been placed on the HIV vulnerability of males who sell sex to males in India. However, there is little research that outlines the trajectories through which males come to be involved in practicing sex work in India. Locating “male sex work” within a vibrant social, political, and erotic landscape, this article explores the intertwining of “sexual subjectivity” and “sex work.” The authors refer to 70 sexual life histories generated from research conducted in Mysore to unsettle dominant public health notions that regard male sex work as rooted solely in poverty or as a decontexualized “behavioral risk factor.” Such perspectives are countered by demonstrating how male sex work in Mysore encompasses a complex interplay between self-realization, sexual desire, social interaction, and public health discourse. Local conceptualizations of selfhood are discussed to suggest the limitations of prevailing empowerment discourses that advance Western notions of individuality.

“Carnivalesque” is perhaps the best, if not the only way to describe what was going on at the Bab al-Saghir Cemetery that hot summer afternoon in 2008.  In front of the graves of the Prophet’s wives, Shi‘i pilgrims could buy Viagra, sex-enhancement creams, and massage oils.  Sexual mores were normally strictly guarded in Syria and medicines were usually available only at pharmacies.  Yet, there in one of the most historically and religiously significant cemeteries in Damascus, makeshift vendors sold an array of sex-related items.  In order to analyze this phenomenon, this article draws on Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of the “carnivalesque.”  First, it provides a short background of Twelver Shi‘ism in Syria and explains how Shi‘i religious tourism encouraged the development of black markets.  Then, it examines how Shi‘i pilgrimage, which occurred all year around, but peaked during Muharram, fostered an attitude that liberated Shi‘is from prevalent social norms and emphasized “grotesque” imagery and practices, including blood, death, and sex.  In short, it follows Michael Taussig’s call for anthropologists to attend to the transgressive aspects of religious ritual.

Class Description: While the recent popularity of the term "sex-worker" is becoming more common to denote that sexual labor should be thought of as work, it is still rare to consider sex-workers as complex socio-political actors in their communities. Affirming the connection between sex-work and politics invokes the idea that " the personal is political " , a 1960's rallying call of the U.S. feminist movement. In this course we will move away from generalized conceptions of sex-workers as either stigmatized, glamorized, or victimized people. We will explore the changing language around prostitution and agency, and will lay the foundation to better understand contemporary sex work in the US with comparison examples from Latin America.

In dem folgenden Aufsatz befindet sich ein Interview mit einem Sugar Babe. Aus persönlichen Gründen der Interviewten wurde ihr Name zur Anonymisierung verändert.
Der Schwerpunkt meiner Arbeit liegt darin, ein Verständnis für das Konzept  des Sugar-Datings zu vermitteln und einen Einblick in ihre Lebenswelt zu gewinnen.
Im Vorhinein muss ich betonen, dass ihre Erfahrungen nicht auf alle Sexarbeiter übertragbar sind. Eine genaue Identifikation ihrer Position und Privilegien sind notwendig. In dem Fall meiner Interviewten handelt es sich um eine freie Berufswahl.

Men who have unprotected sex with men may also have unprotected sex with women and thus serve as an epidemiological bridge for HIV to the general population. This cross sectional descriptive study assessed condom and lubricant use and practice of transactional sex among men who have sex with men (MSM) in Lagos state. Simple random sampling was used to select three community centres and snowball sampling technique was used to recruit 321 respondents. Almost half (50.9%) had received payment for sex while 45.4% had paid for sex in the past. Consistent condom use was practiced by 40.5% of respondents during the last 10 sexual encounters, 85.6% used lubricants mostly with condom, products used were KY jelly, body cream, saliva and Vaseline. There is need for behavioural change to reduce risky practices which predisposes this group of MSM to HIV and sexually transmitted infections.

The present study examines the psychometric properties of a verbal, face-to-face administration of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) with female street-based sex workers (N = 171). Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) indicated a poor fit between our data and the instrument's established 5-factor structure. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) yielded four stable and usable factors corresponding to the Emotional Abuse, Emotional Neglect, Physical Abuse, and Sexual Abuse subscales of the CTQ; the Physical Neglect subscale did not emerge as a stable factor. Cross loading of many CTQ items onto more than one factor most likely produced the poor CFA fit, and indicated that abuse/neglect constructs were not conceptually distinct for our sample. Mean trauma scores did not differ significantly from published scores for female substance abusers. According to the CTQ Minimization/Denial scale, 42% of participants minimized their childhood maltreatment experiences. A combination of qualitative and quantitative methods may be optimal for the acquisition of sensitive trauma information with wary and vulnerable street populations.