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Results for prostitutes (india)

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Author: Shah, Svati P.

Title: Sex Work and Women's Movements

Summary: This paper places the development of sex workers’ movements over the past two decades within the historical context of feminist discourses on violence against women. The paper discusses the importance of the discourse on violence against women in framing contemporary abolitionist campaigns that seek to criminalize sex work. It goes on to discuss the contemporary context, including the status of alliances and dialogue between women’s, LGBTQ, and sex workers’ movements, focusing on India. The history of responses to the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the question of agency are also discussed. The paper ultimately calls into question the effects of using a liberal framework to craft interventions in the governance of sexual commerce. The argument presented here is derived from the author’s research on sex work in India, and from participation in LGBTQ, feminist, and sex workers’ movements in India and in the U.S. This paper traces the relationship between sex workers’ and feminist movements in India in order to identify and explore insights in some of the most dynamic and controversial areas for advocacy and policy making within the growing intersections of sexuality and human rights. In so doing, the paper marks the current moment of change between and among women’s and sex workers’ movements, and explores what the significance of sex worker-led activism might be for sexuality-related research and jurisprudence. Given that feminist and sex workers’ movements address issues of gender based inequality, the state, and health, the paper marks this moment by asking why these movements have developed distinctly from one another? In particular, why have mainstream feminist organizations historically eschewed individual sex workers as feminist contemporaries and comrades, in favor of either regarding sex workers as objects of rescue, or as adversaries in the aim of achieving gender equality? To be sure, the evolution of sex worker movements is distinct from that of ‘feminist’ or ‘women’s’ movements.

Details: New Delhi: CREA India, 2011. 44p.

Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 5, 2011 at: http://web.creaworld.org/files/f2.pdf

Year: 2011

Country: India

URL: http://web.creaworld.org/files/f2.pdf

Shelf Number: 122302

Keywords:
Feminist Movement
Prostitutes (India)
Prostitution
Sex Workers

Author: Sahni, Rohini

Title: The First Pan-India Survey of Sex Workers: A Summary of Preliminary Findings

Summary: This summary, written under the aegis of the Center for Advocacy on Stigma and Marginalisation (CASAM), presents the preliminary results of the first pan-India survey on sex workers. These preliminary findings have been developed for an event in Mumbai on 30 April 2011. Over two years a sample of 3000 female and 1355 male and trans persons in sex work was drawn from fourteen states1 and one Union Territory through the coordinated effort of a number of organisations. The male and trans sex worker data is yet to be analysed and will be presented in the next phase. The survey pools a national sample divided by geographies, languages, sites of operation, migratory patterns, incomes, and cultures amongst other variables. Only sex workers beyond collectivised/organised (and therefore politically active) spaces were surveyed in order to bring forth the voices of a hitherto silent section of sex workers. „Women in prostitution‟ have always been the object of research, although they have not always been seen as „sex workers‟. They have often been seen as slaves and as trafficked women. Both sex trafficking and sex work are, “emotive issues about which much has been written with more passion than objectivity because they touch the core of our beliefs about morality, justice, gender and human rights.” (George, Vindhya and Ray, 2010) In the wake of HIV, there has been a renewed engagement with sex workers as subjects of research. However this research has been carried out to fulfil a range of purposes beyond those of interest to sex workers and findings have not always reflected the lives of sex workers, about which there are many assumptions. Studies of sex workers often reduce complex lives into simplistic binaries, most commonly: an understanding of female sex workers as freely engaging in, or forced into sex work. This is both inaccurate and insufficient. Much relevant information is ignored such as family and social-economic background, caste and religious segregations, sexual identities, marital status, not to mention work identities other than and in addition to sex work. This survey uses multiple variables to understand how their lives get constructed prior to and in sex work. While a growing number of first-person accounts have been articulated by sex workers and sex workers right activists, it is not entirely clear how representative their voices are. This report provides preliminary results of empirical research of a survey administered amongst sex workers nationally and has objectivity of assessment as one of its underlying aims. The survey allowed sex workers to express their work identities, both in sex work and out of it, providing flexibility to assert multiple work identities. What this study reveals is that in describing their working lives, a significant number of females move quite fluidly between other occupations and sex work. For example, a street vendor may search for customers while selling vegetables and a dancer at marriages may also take clients. It is not easy to demarcate women‟s work into neatly segregated compartments. Sex work and other work come together in ways that challenge the differentiation of sex work as an unusual and isolated activity. The survey pools together a sufficiently large national-level sample of females divided by geographies, languages, sites of operation, migratory patterns, incomes, cultures, to mention just a few of the variables. Rather than reducing the women to clichéd stereotypes we seek to bring to the surface their non sex-work histories, either alongside or prior to engaging with sex work. In doing so, we address some of the realities surrounding sex work in the country and demystify some of the polarised and often simplistic narratives, which paint such work in opaquely value-laden terms.

Details: Maharashtra, India: Center for Advocacy on Stigma and Marginalisation, 2011. 14p.

Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 3, 2012 at: http://sangram.org/Download/Pan-India-Survey-of-Sex-workers.pdf

Year: 2011

Country: India

URL: http://sangram.org/Download/Pan-India-Survey-of-Sex-workers.pdf

Shelf Number: 124808

Keywords:
Prostitutes (India)
Prostitution
Sex Workers

Author: Sahni, Rohini

Title: The First Pan-India Survey of Sex Workers: A Summary of Preliminary Findings

Summary: This summary, written under the aegis of the Center for Advocacy on Stigma and Marginalisation (CASAM), presents the preliminary results of the first pan-India survey on sex workers. These preliminary findings have been developed for an event in Mumbai on 30 April 2011. Over two years a sample of 3000 female and 1355 male and trans persons in sex work was drawn from fourteen states1 and one Union Territory through the coordinated effort of a number of organisations. The male and trans sex worker data is yet to be analysed and will be presented in the next phase. The survey pools a national sample divided by geographies, languages, sites of operation, migratory patterns, incomes, and cultures amongst other variables. Only sex workers beyond collectivised/organised (and therefore politically active) spaces were surveyed in order to bring forth the voices of a hitherto silent section of sex workers. „Women in prostitution‟ have always been the object of research, although they have not always been seen as „sex workers‟. They have often been seen as slaves and as trafficked women. Both sex trafficking and sex work are, “emotive issues about which much has been written with more passion than objectivity because they touch the core of our beliefs about morality, justice, gender and human rights.” (George, Vindhya and Ray, 2010) In the wake of HIV, there has been a renewed engagement with sex workers as subjects of research. However this research has been carried out to fulfil a range of purposes beyond those of interest to sex workers and findings have not always reflected the lives of sex workers, about which there are many assumptions. Studies of sex workers often reduce complex lives into simplistic binaries, most commonly: an understanding of female sex workers as freely engaging in, or forced into sex work. This is both inaccurate and insufficient. Much relevant information is ignored such as family and social-economic background, caste and religious segregations, sexual identities, marital status, not to mention work identities other than and in addition to sex work. This survey uses multiple variables to understand how their lives get constructed prior to and in sex work. While a growing number of first-person accounts have been articulated by sex workers and sex workers right activists, it is not entirely clear how representative their voices are. This report provides preliminary results of empirical research of a survey administered amongst sex workers nationally and has objectivity of assessment as one of its underlying aims. The survey allowed sex workers to express their work identities, both in sex work and out of it, providing flexibility to assert multiple work identities. What this study reveals is that in describing their working lives, a significant number of females move quite fluidly between other occupations and sex work. For example, a street vendor may search for customers while selling vegetables and a dancer at marriages may also take clients. It is not easy to demarcate women‟s work into neatly segregated compartments. Sex work and other work come together in ways that challenge the differentiation of sex work as an unusual and isolated activity. The survey pools together a sufficiently large national-level sample of females divided by geographies, languages, sites of operation, migratory patterns, incomes, cultures, to mention just a few of the variables. Rather than reducing the women to clichéd stereotypes we seek to bring to the surface their non sex-work histories, either alongside or prior to engaging with sex work. In doing so, we address some of the realities surrounding sex work in the country and demystify some of the polarised and often simplistic narratives, which paint such work in opaquely value-laden terms.

Details: Maharashtra, India: Center for Advocacy on Stigma and Marginalisation, 2011. 14p.

Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 3, 2012 at: http://sangram.org/Download/Pan-India-Survey-of-Sex-workers.pdf

Year: 2011

Country: India

URL: http://sangram.org/Download/Pan-India-Survey-of-Sex-workers.pdf

Shelf Number: 124808

Keywords:
Prostitutes (India)
Prostitution
Sex Workers