sex workers

AWID

Sex workers ran a number of exciting and challenging sessions during the AWID Forum in Istanbul. In their interactions with delegates they have been stressing the importance of listening to sex workers and acknowledging sex work as work. There has also been a plea for the silent majority of feminists who support sex workers rights to raise their voices to condemn interventions like anti-trafficking raid and rescues which are often carried out in the name of feminism. The Association for Women’s Rights in Development Forum will take place in Istanbul in April. It will be an opportunity for women working

journal

Wagadu, an open access online feminist journal, has released a special issue ‘Demystifying sex work and sex workers.’ With articles from activist scholars the special issue, focuses on the everyday lives of sex workers. Susan Dewey of the University of Wyoming who edited the issue explains, “While recent years have witnessed a dramatic outpouring of feminist scholarship that situates sex work within its broader socioeconomic and political contexts cross-culturally, there remains a tendency for academic scholarship to unconsciously reinforce the social stigmatization of sex workers by depicting them solely through their income-earning activities. This burgeoning research has convincingly demonstrated that sex

stigma

HIV; human rights;

There is growing interest in the ways in which legal and human rights issues related to sex work affect sex workers’ vulnerability to HIV and abuses including human trafficking and sexual exploitation. International agencies, such as UNAIDS, have called for decriminalisation of sex work because the delivery of sexual and reproductive health services is affected by criminalisation and social exclusion as experienced by sex workers.

monograph

A report published today by the University of NSW says sex workers, especially in Lautoka, the centre of Fiji’s sugar industry, north of Nadi, have been rounded up by the military and subjected to sleep deprivation, humiliation and forced physical labour. Karen McMillan, a researcher with the International HIV Research Group at UNSW, said the sex workers were held in outdoor pens at an army base, woken every three hours and made to do duck-walks and squat in the mud.

book chapter

An analysis if different political conceptualisations of sex work. Excllent 1998 article by Dr Alison Murray who was one of the first sex workers to recognise the rise of the myths and flawed discourse of trafficking as a potent threat to sex workers human rights. Chapter in Laura J. Shepherd (Ed.), Gender Matters in Global Politics: A feminist introduction to international relations (pp. 89-101) Abingdon, Oxen, U.K.: Routledge. A chapter by Ramjee G in Abdool Karim S. S. ‘HIV/AIDS in South Africa’, Cambridge University Press. The author provides an overview of the dynamics of sex work and HIV in Africa

HIV

PATTAYA, Thailand, 15 October 2010 – At the first-ever Asia-Pacific consultation on HIV and sex work, sex workers, government officials and United Nations participants emphasized the need for urgent action to increase focus and positioning of sex work within HIV responses in the region. Close to 150 delegates from eight countries (China, Cambodia, Fiji, Indonesia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea and Thailand) met in Pattaya, Thailand, to form partnerships and review policies and laws that keep sex workers from accessing HIV services and sexual and reproductive health services. “Sex work interventions must be central to scaling up the HIV response,

wages

A news story in the Asia Sentinal by Geeta Seshu, 25 May 2011. Why do women in India become sex workers? They can make more money and live better. Poverty and limited education push females into labor markets at an early age, but the sheer desire for a better income and a better life pushes them into sex work, according to a path-breaking, pan-India survey of sex workers.

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