Interview with Association for Women's Rights in Development

You prefer to refer to the women you work with as 'Women in Prostitution' rather than 'sex workers.' Why is this?   
A: I represent an organization called Apne Aap Women Worldwide, which has a membership of 1092  women in prostitution all over India.  Apne Aap members have decided to use the term ‘women in prostitution’ for adults and the term ‘prostituted child’ instead of ‘child prostitutes or child sex-worker’ for girls and boys.
 

Apne Aap members feel that:
The term sex-worker sterilizes the inherently exploitative nature of prostitution and invalidates the women’s traumatic experiences of subjugation, degradation and pain.
The term sex-worker naturalizes and makes acceptable in society the sexual exploitation of women or children. The term sex-worker makes it convenient for different states and governments to ignore the structural social, economic and political policies that force women into prostitution.
 

Very often governments, policy makers and buyers of prostituted sex argue that women chose prostitution as a work option over working in sweat shops, domestic servitude or other forms of hard or cheap labor. They forget, or chose to make invisible, that for women, other options have been limited in terms of highly paid employment (especially when higher education is lacking or husbands/fathers decide or have control over a woman’s time), and prostitution and pornography remain among the more highly paid occupations available to women.
They refuse to look at or re-examine the fact that economic and social policies make other lucrative employment unavailable to women and that gender discrimination and occupational segregation funnel women into particular occupations.
 

The term sex-worker categorizes prostitution as a kind of work. Prostitution cannot be categorized as work (even exploitative work in sweat shops or domestic servitude) as it disconnects the self from the activity. It always involves penetration of the body. Apne Aap members see their sexuality as an integral part of themselves, and feel they are selling themselves when their bodies are sold for sex. To cope with the experience, many Apne Aap members detach themselves emotionally from their bodies- effectively segmenting themselves, or entering into out of body experiences. So besides risking disease or death they suffer from the deep psychological trauma of alienation from their own bodies.
 

While labor movements can and do guarantee certain minimum conditions and standards for workers, providing for energy and time needed for the worker to be a fulfilled human being, prostitution inherently cannot do so.

Example:
All labor movements strive for minimum wages. In prostitution there is no guarantee of minimum wages, as the price of a woman varies with age, time of night, and location.
Moreover, in brothel-based sex there is no such thing as minimum wages. For the first five years, the brothel owner owns the woman or child and keeps her like a bonded slave and spends an amount to keep her in a subsistence condition. For the next five years, she may give half of what she earns, later she is allowed to keep all that she earns but her earning capacity comes down.
 

All labor movements aspire to certain minimum working conditions. In prostitution, all women face violence that cannot be legislated away as they are ultimately alone with the buyer of prostituted sex. In both brothel-based and non-brothel based prostitution, women are forced to speeden up the process of earning more money by servicing an increasing number of buyers, sometimes up to 20. They are also forced to provide all kinds of services and high-risk activities like sex without a condom as most often they are not in any negotiating position. They are kept locked up in brothels, have no access to medical care or education and often are sold when they are children. Their children play on the floor while they service their buyers. They live in small rooms with barred windows end up with insomnia, repeated abortions, jaundice TB, cigarette burns, HIV and AIDS and trauma. And while some of these conditions can be regulated in brothel-based sex, they cannot be regulated in street-based sex at all.
 

All labor movements work to guarantee retirement benefits such as old age pension. Prostitution cannot guarantee old age benefits as there is no defined employer in street based sex and in brothel based sex, the women or child is often sold again and again from one brothel owner to another. Mortality rates in prostitution are high due to sexual violence, sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV and AIDS and repeated abortions and suicide attempts related to psycho-social trauma. The average age of death of a woman in prostitution in India is now 35 years. Additionally, the older a women in prostitution gets, the less she is able to earn an income and very often ends up on the streets, with no income, a disease ridden body and a few children.
 

Finally and most importantly for labor movements is the question of dignity of the worker. Labor movements have insured that miners do not have to crawl into mines anymore but walk upright. However, in prostitution the woman or child is constantly humiliated physically, emotionally and psychologically. Her price is constantly negotiated as the night wears on or as she grows older. She is forced to sexualize her body for a time –period and then desexualize it again at another time.
 

The term ‘sex-worker’ gives a false impression of agency and choice exercised by women and children in prostitution. Apne Aap members’ life-experiences reveal that the choice and agency in prostitution, talked about in some policy circles, is a choice allowed by the exploiter in an exploitative situation as in the days of slavery.
 

We can examine the exercise of choice in the life-cycle of a woman in prostitution over a period of 20 years from when she is 15 to when she is 35. This is a hopeful projection, as most Apne Aap members say that the normal time-span that the body of a woman can cope with prostitution is no more than ten years.
 

The first five years (15-20): In this period, girls kidnapped, stolen. tricked, sold and lured are locked up in small rooms with barred windows only brought out by the brothel madam to serve up to 15-20 buyers of prostituted sex every night. They are served one meal a day, given some clothes and toiletries, but they are not given any of the money that the buyer pays for them. They are in slave-like conditions and have no choice. In every conversation with them, they talk about wanting to go home.
The second five years (20-25): There is a period of socialization within the brothels and the women are taught to become dependent on drugs and alcohol. Brothel madams also make sure that they have one or two children so that the women cannot think about returning home anymore. In this period, the women are allowed by the brothel madam to keep half of what they earn. Memories of home become hazy due to repeated violence and psycho-social trauma and they begin to suffer from the Stockholm syndrome, where the small mercies meted out by the kidnapper seem of great moment. With children, suffering from depression and diseases, they do no see a way out. At this time, when asked the women say they want to stay in the brothels and no go back home.
The third five years (25-30): After ten years of physical abuse, malnutrition and drug and alcohol dependency, the earning capacity of the women comes down. Buyers of prostituted sex look for younger girls. They are allowed to keep all of their earnings but earnings go down and the needs of their children go up. At this time, they want to leave prostitution, but don’t have the life-skills or the physical health to do so. They have no choice.
The fourth five years (30-35): In this period, the women have no buyers of prostituted sex, no income; have two or three children and disease ridden bodies. They are thrown out of the brothels and end up on the sidewalk. They cannot afford even one meal or even access to a toilet. They have no options and are forced to die on the streets.
 

In a period of 20 years, women talk about wanting to exercise a choice to stay in prostitution for about five years. And even this, exercise of choice or agency is in a situation, where the women feel they have no other options and try to make the best of what there is.
 

Therefore, Apne Aap members don’t use the term sex-worker. They also do not use the term prostitute because of the stigma attached with the term. We do not believe that prostitution is a profession. It is a forced occupation. We use the term “women in prostitution” because we believe that if women have other opportunities they would exercise them.
 

Apne Aap members reject initiatives that argue for the “Right to be a Prostitute,” as we believe it reinforces patriarchy and limits women’s choices. We want women to have a level playing field with men, so that women can have the same career options as men.

Apne Aap wants women to have the ‘Right not to be a prostitute.’

When did you begin your work in this area, and why?
Basically, I used to be a journalist. I was traveling in Nepal and I came across rows of villages that didn’t have women ages from 14 to 45. So I began to ask, where are the girls? Some of the men smiled sheepishly and some would simply answer, “Don’t you know they are in Bombay?” I came to find out that there was this whole sex trade: starting with the parent who was really poor, then on to the procurer, an uncle or a family friend who would pay the parent something like $30. There is the middle man in a packed city, the border guard who takes a payoff, the agent who takes the girls across the border to the people who then transport them to Bombay and on to the brothel madame, who buys the girls for $50 to $100. Then there are the landlords who own the brothels, the money-lenders and then finally the customers. This chain, literally a food chain with a never-ending supply, was making a fortune. The girls are as young as seven. I was seriously appalled. I went to try to figure out how to do the story. I contacted CBC and they luckily agreed to put in the money, and I made the documentary- The Selling of Innocents on the trafficking of women and girls from the villages of Nepal to the brothels of Bombay.
 

I spent about 18 months on the research and more on the actual shooting and production. Throughout this, I spent a great deal of time with the women inside the brothels. I wanted the documentary to be fair. I didn’t want to be like a voyeuristic person peeking into someone’s life and then walking away. So I came to a deal with the women in the brothels, where they could ask me as many questions as I asked them. This generated many discussions on feminism and women’s empowerment. The women began to talk to each other as well. They were always so isolated and scared, but doing this project together they began to open up. They soon began to tell me not to go away, to do something, but I told them, ultimately I could not do anything they had to do something for themselves.
 

I told them I could be a facilitator. As a journalist I have seen all types of human suffering—war, famine, drought, natural disasters—but I had never, ever seen this type of exploitation of one human being by another. I just could not walk away. Then 22 women in prostitution and I set up a community based organization in 1998. And that is essentially how Apne Aap (self-help in Hindi) was born.

What are the main problems that women in prostitution are facing?
Please give us an idea of the scale of the problem, and its cause.
 

Hunger and violence are the two immediate terrors that the women face everyday. The price of food has gone up but the income of the women has not. Very often the women skip meals are or are now reduced to taking only one meal a day. Sometimes, they forsake a meal on behalf of their children.
 

Violence from buyers of prostituted sex is an everyday hazard from bottles being shoved inside vaginas to cigarette butts being stubbed out on their bodies to repeated rape and beatings.
 

Rents have gone up in the inner cities where the red-light areas exist and women are being pushed out on the sidewalk by madams who sublet the brothels to migrant workers. Women face increased violence on the sidewalk from beatings, to snatching to rape. They dot have access to water or public toilets and so they scout the streets at night for a secret place.
 

The women also face police brutality both inside and outside the brothels due to the increased criminalization of women who are picked up for soliciting in a public place.  Buyers of prostituted sex, nor the business which runs prostitution  is criminalized to the same extent.
 

Most of the women in Apne Aap are HIV-positive. Access to drugs and then access to nutrition to balance the toxicity of the drugs is a big issue. Men force sex without a condom and few women have the negotiating power to enforce safe sex.
 

The other issue facing women in prostitution in India is intergenerational prostitution. This is really dangerous; when a woman’s children and her children’s children are also sold into prostitution, it becomes institutionalized in that community, city and state. None of the mothers want their daughters to get into prostitution. They want to protect them for as long as they can, but when they become older and disease-ridden, and their earning capacity comes down, they push their daughters into prostitution, because otherwise they starve.

What does your work presently entail?
We have five community centers based on the model that you have to train women on rights, and how to access their rights. We feel if women have the ability to understand and organize for their rights, they will be able to resist sexual exploitation and trafficking. Each community centre starts with an outreach programme to enroll members from women in prostitution. Once the members are enrolled they create a youth committee and a women’s committee in each of the centers. These groups design and run the programmes in the centre with the technical help of Apne Aap staff. We also look at education and health care so that along with rights awareness, women have the emotional and physical strength to exercise their rights.
 

When the girls and women join, they don’t have any notion of their rights, and what is constitutionally their entitlement, so they can’t challenge their exploiters. They don’t know that fathers or husbands have no right to sell them or beat them, that the police cannot extort money from them; that men cannot go inside the brothel anytime and smash the furniture or their walls. So Apne Aap is also trying to tell women how to fight the violence, challenge the traffickers, oppose police brutality, how to tackle HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and all these kinds of things.
 

Second is of course we teach the women how to organize. We have to work together, to eradicate sex trafficking—just buying the girls off is no solution, because that still creates a demand. And as long as there is a demand, there will be a supply.

Would you say your interventions are effective?
Some are and for others it is too soon to say.

• We have been very effective in organizing the women. Apne Aap was formally registered three and a half years ago and in this period we have community centers in five red-light areas and a membership of 1092 women and girls.
• We have been effective in advocacy with new stakeholders- like the Mumbai police who are taking training from us for the past one year to criminalize the demand for prostituted sex; like the corporate sector in Kolkata with whom through the Confederation of Indian Industries (Eastern India) we have held workshops on corporate social security and with artists through workshops organized by artists for children in red-light area on art and narrative therapy.
• We have been a catalyst for internal change in the women who have started taking the ownership for organizing themselves and in two red-light areas with Apne Aap support have started soup kitchens for prostitutes who live on the sidewalk.
• It is too soon to evaluate our exit strategies for women in prostitution as our strategies are long-term, helping the women and girls to develop resilience and life-skills to realize individual self-sufficiency plans rather than removing them to institutional care.

What challenges do you face?
The biggest challenge is the constant and never ending demand for prostituted sex. This demand is constituted of two components: a) buyers of prostituted sex b) business which profits from providing prostituted sex.
 

The moment we are able to organize one community or neighborhood to resist the traffickers, the traffickers shift to another area to buy, recruit, kidnap, trick or seduce a fresh supply of girls to feed the demand.
 

Incidentally I believe you staged a 'That takes ovaries' reading with some of the women in prostitution. How did that go?
It was wonderful – a circle of inspiration. I acted my own story that was documented in That takes Ovaries and it truly was fulfilling to share it in a roomful of women as a story of courage from the time when I was actually in it for real making my documentary. It reaffirmed that a moment of strength can lead to more strength. And then there were the other stories by women who spoke about their bold acts. It was truly inspiring that the moment one of us spoke about our moment of courage, it opened up the floods for all the women in the room and we remembered and articulated our bold acts.