Recognize Sex Work as Work?

Content:

• Sex workers have been an important part of our society but have still remained on the periphery.  Society has always been uneasy in accepting them let alone giving them their due share of respect and rights.
• There have been various degrading words which have been assigned to them since ages. 
• Even if it is a man who regularly makes use of their services behind the doors, they have seldom been accepted outside the four walls. The patriarchal set-up of the society has mandated their dehumanization, exploitation and degradation for its own benefit.
• The relevance and existence of sex workers cannot be denied in any period of history. Their profession has also been seen as lowly and seldom recognized as a valid profession as well. 
• They have been discarded as “unwanted social elements spreading filth in the society” and jeopardizing its ‘purity’.

Laws which Prohibit Sex Work: 

• The legislation governing sex work in India is the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act.
• The legislation penalises acts such as keeping a brothel, soliciting in a public place, living off the earnings of sex work and living with or habitually being in the company of a sex worker.

Difficulties they face due to these laws:

Archaic Law undermines Consent:

• This Act represents the archaic and regressive view that sex work is morally wrong and that the people involved in it, especially women, never consent to it voluntarily. 
• In the popular depiction, entry into sex work is involuntary, forced, and through deception.
• As a consequence, it is believed that these women need to be “rescued” and “rehabilitated”, sometimes even without their consent. While this is a valid argument for minor girls, for many consenting adult sex workers, it has been a problem. 
• The Act fails to recognise that many women willingly enter into agreements with traffickers, sometimes just to seek a better life as chosen by them. 
• Evidence shows that many women choose to remain in sex work despite opportunities to leave after ‘rehabilitation’ by the government or non-governmental organisations.

Prejudice:

• This is what has led to the classification of ‘‘respectable women” and “non-respectable women”. 
• This view is based on the belief that sex work is “easy” work and no one will or should choose to practise it. It thus perpetuates the prejudice that women who do practise sex work are morally devious.
• Most sex workers are Dalits, migrants, or belong to the LGBTQ+ community.

Discrimination and Harrassment:

• The Act has not only criminalised sex work but also further stigmatised and pushed it underground thus leaving sex workers more prone to violence, discrimination and harassment.
• The Act denies an individual their right over their bodies. Moreover, it imposes the will of the state over adults articulating their life choices.

• It gives no agency to the sex workers to fight against the traffickers and in fact, has made them more susceptible to be harassed by the state officials. 

A case for legalizing sex work:

Need for Distinction between Trafficking and Consent:

• The Justice Verma Commission had also acknowledged that there is a distinction between women who are trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation and adult, consenting women who are in sex work of their own volition.

Right to Livelihood and Life with Dignity:

• Adult men, women and transgender persons in sex work have the right to earn through providing sexual services; live with dignity; and remain free from violence, exploitation, stigma and discrimination.

‘Raid and rescue model’ is Counterproductive:

• Global Network of Sex Work holds that constant raids deny the value of an adult person’s agency to consent and is counterproductive.
•  It disturbs their power dynamic with the law enforcement institution and clients.

Abolitionist approach only makes protecting victims difficult:

• The recognition of it being valid work by no means implies closing all exit points. 
• Forced labour and trafficking of any person for any purpose at any place is a crime that should be brought to justice.
• The National Network of Sex Workers argues that the workers could in fact be of help to the law enforcement agencies, by helping them identify victims and perpetrators in the complex trafficking rackets.
• The clubbing of girl child and adult consenting women is used to justify unreasonable restrictions on sex work which only makes the problems in the industry worse and hidden from the law.