scholarly journals Female Sex Work Dynamics: Empowerment, Mobilization, Mobility

2021 ◽  
pp. 43-60
Author(s):  
Saroj Pachauri ◽  
Ash Pachauri ◽  
Komal Mittal
Keyword(s):  
High Risk ◽  
Health Services ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Reproductive Health Services ◽  
Services Research ◽  
Multiple Partners ◽  
Nations Programme ◽  
United Nations Programme ◽  
Sexual Services

AbstractUNAIDS defines sex work as selling sexual services (Ditmore in Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS. UNAIDS, 2008, [1]). Sex workers involved in sexual relations with multiple partners are a key group of women who need access to comprehensive sexual health services, including HIV prevention, treatment, and care (Lafort et al. in Reproductive health services for populations at high risk of HIV: performance of a night clinic in Tete province, Mozambique. BMC Health Services Research, 2010, [2]). There are a broad range of sex workers in various locations including those who are street-based and brothel-based, those who work as escorts, and those who work from their own homes.

scholarly journals Mobility study of young women who exchange sex for money or commodities using Google Maps and qualitative methods in Kampala, Uganda

BMJ Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. e043078
Author(s):  
Rachel King ◽  
Eva Muhanguzi ◽  
Miriam Nakitto ◽  
Miriam Mirembe ◽  
Francis Xavier Kasujja ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
High Risk ◽  
Health Services ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Hiv Risk ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
High Mobility ◽  
Mobility Patterns ◽  
Google Maps ◽  
Hiv Negative

ObjectivesWe aimed to assess mobility patterns and reasons for high mobility among young women engaged in sex work within a randomised controlled trial to gauge how mobility may hinder access to health services and enhance HIV risk in a highly vulnerable population.SettingParticipants were recruited from a clinic in Kampala, Uganda set up for women at high risk of HIV infection.ParticipantsAdolescent girls and young women engaged in sex for money and/or commodities are at particular risk in countries with high HIV prevalence and high fertility rates. High mobility increases exposure to HIV risk. Women participants were eligible for the parent study if aged 15–24 years, HIV negative and engaged in sex work. For this substudy, 34 qualitative interviews were held with 14 sex workers (6 HIV positive, 8 HIV negative), 6 health worker/policy makers, 3 peer educators, 5 ‘queen mothers’ and 6 male partnersMeasuresParticipants used Google Maps to identify work venues at 12-month and 18-month study visits. We also conducted 34 interviews on mobility with: high-risk women, male partners, health workers and sex-worker managers. Topics included: distance, frequency and reasons for mobility. We used Python software to analyse mapping data.ResultsInterviews found in depth narratives describing lack of education and employment opportunities, violence, lack of agency, social, sexual and familial support networks and poverty as a complex web of reasons for high mobility among young sex workers.ConclusionsYoung women at high risk are highly mobile. Reasons for mobility impact access and retention to health services and research activities. Strategies to improve retention in care should be cognisant and tailored to suit mobility patterns.Trial registration numberNCT03203200.

scholarly journals The Double-Edged Sword of Health and Safety: COVID-19 and the Policing and Exclusion of Migrant Asian Massage Workers in North America

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 157
Author(s):  
Elene Lam ◽  
Elena Shih ◽  
Katherine Chin ◽  
Kate Zen
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Human Trafficking ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Interpersonal Violence ◽  
Sex Trafficking ◽  
The State ◽  
Emergency Relief ◽  
Sexual Services

Migrant Asian massage workers in North America first experienced the impacts of COVID-19 in the final weeks of January 2020, when business dropped drastically due to widespread xenophobic fears that the virus was concentrated in Chinese diasporic communities. The sustained economic devastation, which began at least 8 weeks prior to the first social distancing and shelter in place orders issued in the U.S. and Canada, has been further complicated by a history of aggressive policing of migrant massage workers in the wake of the war against human trafficking. Migrant Asian massage businesses are increasingly policed as locales of potential illicit sex work and human trafficking, as police and anti-trafficking initiatives target migrant Asian massage workers despite the fact that most do not provide sexual services. The scapegoating of migrant Asian massage workers and criminalization of sex work have led to devastating systemic and interpersonal violence, including numerous deportations, arrests, and deaths, most notably the recent murder of eight people at three Atlanta-based spas. The policing of sex workers has historically been mobilized along fears of sexually transmitted disease and infection, and more recently, within the past two decades, around a moral panic against sex trafficking. New racial anxieties around the coronavirus as an Asian disease have been mobilized by the state to further cement the justification of policing Asian migrant workers along the axes of health, migration, and sexual labor. These justifications also solidify discriminatory social welfare regimes that exclude Asian migrant massage workers from accessing services on the basis of the informality and illegality of their work mixed with their precarious citizenship status. This paper draws from ethnographic participant observation and survey data collected by two sex worker organizations that work primarily with massage workers in Toronto and New York City to examine the double-edged sword of policing during the pandemic in the name of anti-trafficking coupled with exclusionary policies regarding emergency relief and social welfare, and its effects on migrant Asian massage workers in North America. Although not all migrant Asian massage workers, including those surveyed in this paper, provide sexual services, they are conflated, targeted, and treated as such by the state and therefore face similar barriers of criminalization, discrimination, and exclusion. This paper recognizes that most migrant Asian massage workers do not identify as sex workers and does not intend to label them as such or reproduce the scapegoating rhetoric used by law enforcement. Rather, it seeks to analyze how exclusionary attitudes and policies towards sex workers are transferred onto migrant Asian massage workers as well whether or not they provide sexual services.

Risk-adapted screening in bladder cancer using the open-access Internet-based questionnaire RiskCheck bladder cancer: First evaluation by the health services research foundation IQUO, Germany.

2012 ◽  
Vol 30 (5_suppl) ◽  
pp. 263-263
Author(s):  
Gerson Luedecke ◽  
Goetz Geiges ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Bladder Cancer ◽  
High Risk ◽  
Open Access ◽  
Health Services Research ◽  
Health Services ◽  
Risk Stratification ◽  
Daily Routine ◽  
Services Research ◽  
Asymptomatic Patients ◽  
Increased Risk

263 Background: Till this day urologists are waiting on symptomatic persons to initiate any diagnostic work-up to identify bladder cancer (BC) patients. In result we diagnose a quarter to a third of our patients as muscle-invasive cancers. The open-access questionnaire RiskCheck bladder cancer (RCBC) was proven in a pilot-study in daily routine from German urologists organized in the health services research foundation IQUO on asymptomatic patients. Methods: The open-access RCBC questionnaire was used in urological offices to check asymptomatic patients for their BC risk exposure (personal, smoking, occupation and medical induced). The tool delivers the classical risk stratification in low- intermediate- and high risk. All people with intermediate and high risk were checked for tumor presence by urine diagnostics and in case of suspect results controlled by cystoscopy. Statistical analysis was made by IBM-SPSS 19 for incidence distribution and correlation between risk stratification and tumor detection was proven by classification tree analysis, significance p < 0.05. Results: Out of 196 checked asymptomatic persons 185 (93.4%) were negative for tumor and 11 had a detectable tumor. In the group of NED 125 (68.1%) persons were classified as low risk, 26 (15.7%) as intermediate and 30 (16.2%) as high risk. Out of the 11 detected tumors 9 were at intermediate or high risk (81.8%). This resulted in an over all detection rate of 5.6% and focused on the risk population of 13.2%. The association of tumor presence and increased risk was significant (p < 0.01). Compared to the western incidence rates this is an increase in effectiveness of 377. Conclusions: Risk-adapted screening in bladder cancer delivers a reasonable approach to diagnose bladder cancer before emerging symptoms. The questionnaire RCBC integrates evidence based bladder cancer inductors, is easy in use and as a open-access tool available in 10 languages via the Internet ( www.riskcheck-bladder-cancer.info) .

Private sex workers’ engagement with sexual health services: an online survey

Sexual Health ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 93
Author(s):  
C. Thng ◽  
E. Blackledge ◽  
R. McIver ◽  
L. Watchirs Smith ◽  
A. McNulty
Keyword(s):  
Health Services ◽  
Sexual Health ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Throat Swab ◽  
Cervical Screening ◽  
Health Needs ◽  
Health Clinic ◽  
Gp Services

This study examined where private sex workers (PSW) present for sexual health services, disclosure, services received, and their satisfaction with care. An online anonymous survey was conducted via SurveyMonkey (surveymonkey.com). Among the 53 participants, 42% attended a sexual health clinic, 24% attended a general practitioner (GP) and 34% attended both. Participants attending GPs were less likely to be offered a throat swab and opportunities for cervical screening, contraception and vaccination were often missed in both service models. Participants attending GPs were less likely to disclose sex work and were less satisfied. Better awareness of the sexual health needs of PSWs is important in GP services.

scholarly journals Sex Work and the City

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-13
Author(s):  
Helen Roitberg
Keyword(s):  
Sex Work ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Sexual Exploitation ◽  
State Regulation ◽  
Indigenous Women ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Sexual Services ◽  
The City ◽  
Ongoing Project

Bill C-36, or the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act, which was introduced in Canada in 2014, made the purchase of sexual services illegal. To the end of eliminating sex work, Bill C-36 rests on the premise that sex work is inherently exploitative, and that sex workers and their communities are harmed by the exchange of sexual services. Considering that Indigenous women are overrepresented among sex workers and disproportionately victims of severe violence, this paper examines the goals of Bill C-36 in conversation with Canada’s ongoing project of colonialism. This paper demonstrates that Bill C-36 upholds the systemic devaluation of Indigeneity by which Indigenous women’s bodies are rendered deserving of violence, and by which this violence is normalized and invisibilized. Rather than protect ‘victims’ of sexual exploitation, Bill C-36 relies on the colonial stereotypes of the Indigenous prostitute to reimagine sexually autonomous Indigenous women as inherent threats to (white) Canadian society and themselves, and thereby justify state regulation in both public and private spaces.

scholarly journals Identifying Risk Factors and Spatial Clustering of HIV Infection Among Female Sex Workers in India

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-53
Author(s):  
Elangovan Arumugam ◽  
Vasna Joshua ◽  
Santhakumar Aridoss ◽  
Ganesh Balasubramanian ◽  
Nagaraj Jaganathasamy ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
High Risk ◽  
Hiv Infection ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Female Sex Workers ◽  
Component Analysis ◽  
Index Score ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Female Sex ◽  
Selling Sex

Background: The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) epidemic in India is generally considered to be more concentrated, with the focus on high-risk groups including female sex workers (FSWs). The Integrated Biological and Behavioral Surveillance (IBBS), the first nationwide surveillance conducted during 2014-2015, collected many key indicators, including indicators related to HIV/STI transmission. The purpose of this study was to develop an index score for each domain surveyed and to identify focus areas for interventions among FSWs. Methods: The study population consisted of 27,007 FSWs. Forty high-risk related covariates of HIV/STI transmission, demographic characteristics, sexual history, condom practices, knowledge of HIV/STI and biological variables were considered. The original data set was examined using the correlation matrix and was reduced to 15 highly-correlated factors using principal component analysis. The factors were further improved using varimax rotation and the percentage of variation was used as weights to obtain the initial score for each domain, which were then standardized for comparison. Bartlett’s test of sphericity was examined before the factor extraction. Results: Six factors were extracted, which together explained about 73% of the total variation. The factors were: (1) more number of clients; (2) younger FSW and started selling sex at younger age; (3) experiencing condom breakage; (4) having occasional clients and poor HIV/AIDS knowledge; (5) illiteracy; and (6) a longer period of sex work. Six domains with an index score of above 80, from the states of Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Arunachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Jharkhand need greater intervention. Conclusion and Implications for Translation: FSWs’ current age, age at commencement of sex work, and the number of clients were the indicators most-associated with HIV infection. Therefore, program and policy interventions should focus on FSWs who are younger than <25 years, who started selling sex at <22 years, and who have >10 clients. Key words: • Female Sex Worker • Kriged Map • Factor Analysis • Principle Component Analysis • HIV • Sexually Transmitted Infections   Copyright © 2021 Elangovan et al. Published by Global Health and Education Projects, Inc. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in this journal, is properly cited.

scholarly journals The Sexual Behavior of Male Sexual Partner of Tranvestite in the Prevention Efforts of HIV/AIDS Transmission

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Azinar ◽  
Anggipita Budi Mahardining
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Behavior ◽  
High Risk ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Risk Groups ◽  
Regular Partner ◽  
Multiple Sexual Partners ◽  
Multiple Partners ◽  
Biological And Behavioral Surveillance ◽  
Male Sexual Partner ◽  
Hiv Aids

Transvestite is one of the high risk groups in HIV/AIDS. Integrated Biological and Behavioral Surveillance (IBBS) states that in 2011, the HIV prevalence among waria in Indonesia has reached 22%, increasing from 2009 (18.96%). Such occurrence is because transvestite usually has multiple partners in intercourse both oral and anal sex, and rarely use condoms. Similarly, the male regular partners of transvestite also have sex with multiple sexual partners. Therefore, they also have a high risk of spread of HIV/AIDS. The objective of this study is to analyze sexual behavior of male regular partner of transvestite in Efforts to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS. The study was carried out in 2014 using qualitative approach. Data was collected by in-depth interview on 6 male regular partner of transvestite through purposive sampling and triangulation informants of peer educators. The result shows that the use of condom on male regular partners of transvestite is still low and they inconsistently use when having sex with transvestite, female sex workers and female girlfriend. Their knowledge about HIV/AIDS is not good, and some regular partner of transvestite also felt susceptibility to contracting HIV. However, the perceived severity and perceived of benefits male regular partner of transvestite is good about HIV /AIDS despite the barrier of perceived and perceived self-efficacy is low related access to condoms.

Sex workers access to health and social care services: A social justice response

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-348
Author(s):  
Leigh-Ann Sweeney ◽  
Leonard Taylor ◽  
Michal Molcho
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Health Services ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Social Care ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Sex Industry ◽  
Care Services ◽  
Health And Social Care ◽  
Provision Of Services

This research explores service providers’ views on the barriers that prevent women in the sex work industry in Ireland from accessing co-ordinated health services. A purposive sample of eight service providers in the field of women’s health and social care in the West of Ireland were selected and interviewed for this study. The service providers were asked about their perception of the barriers of sex workers accessing health and social care services. Using thematic analysis, three key themes were identified: (1) lack of knowledge of women’s involvement in sex work; (2) identified barriers to health services; and (3) legislative and policy barriers to providing supportive services. While the service providers acknowledged that they do not knowingly provide services for sex workers, they all recognise that some of their service users are at risk of, and potentially are, involved in sex work. Yet, they were able to identify some of the barriers sex workers face when accessing their services. All these barriers were the result to the services’ limited capacity to support women engaging in sex work. At the time of data collection, the legislative context meant that selling sex under certain conditions was outside the law. This study highlights the consequences that criminalisation can have on the health of sex workers and the need for a paradigm shift in existing health and social care services. In this paper, we propose that a social justice rather than a criminal justice approach has the potential to address sex workers’ right to access appropriate health care. This paper gives due recognition to marginalised women, and advocates for better provision of services for women in the sex industry, while considering the new legislation of 2017.

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