In this paper, we examine whether the earnings of sex workers in India are significantly different from those in domestic work, a trade that is also gendered in nature and can be done with similarly low levels of training and education. We analyse this using data collected during fieldwork in the cities of Kolkata and Delhi in India. Our results confirm that there is a significant difference in wages between the two groups of workers. We consider the extent to which the stigma attached to sex work contributes to the higher wages in this occupation relative to domestic work. To do this, we control for endogeneity caused by selection on unobservables. We find that stigma is a significant contributory factor to the wage differential. We also preliminarily consider an alternate explanation – that of violence in the trade. We find that the experience of violence in the trade does not affect the take home earnings of the individuals.
Tag Archives: Labor
Informal governance and the spatial management of street-based sex work in Aotearoa New Zealand
Abstract
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While informality has long been studied as a feature of governance in the global South, a growing range of accounts examine informal governing arrangements as endemic to cities and nations of the global North. This paper contributes to such scholarship by drawing attention to informal practices and mechanisms involved in the spatial management of sex work in the global North. Existing literature on the spatial management of sex work has long emphasised how informality shapes local sex work practices and mediates formal state-based regulation. We synthesise these studies to suggest three modes of informal governance: as component, catalyst and alternative to formal regulation. Through a case study of street-based sex work management in Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand, we discuss how informal governance emerged as a de facto component of formal regulation at the national scale and an alternative to formal regulation at the local scale. Specifically, we detail how an ambiguous regulatory environment, combined with highly localised understandings of spatial appropriateness, led to and influenced the informal management of sex work through a community-level partnership between local authorities, residents and sex worker advocates. In doing so, the paper advocates for more attention to the multi-modal and multi-scalar aspects of informal governance.
“I’m Not a Bloody Slave, I Get Paid and If I Don’t Get Paid Then Nothing Happens”: Sarah’s Experience of Being a Student Sex Worker
Sex work remains a contentious area of debate. Whether or not sex work is considered to be a form of labour is in itself contested. As discussion is often about rather than with sex workers, this article brings Sarah’s experiences of being both a student and a sex worker, in two different areas of the UK, to centre stage. This candid account highlights the precarious and competitive nature of being self-employed within the current neoliberal climate, as well as the similarities sex work shares with other ‘mainstream’ forms of labour particularly within the ‘gig economy’. Existing research has focused on how/why students enter the sex industry leaving a gap in the literature regarding what happens after university in this context. It appears from Sarah’s account that leaving sex work behind may not be as straightforward as she had originally anticipated, for reasons other than just making money.
“The Prostitution Problem”: Claims, Evidence, and Policy Outcomes
Abstract
Foley, Ellen E. „“The Prostitution Problem”: Insights from Senegal“. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 14. Dezember 2018. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-018-1368-3.
Morality, Social Disorder, and the Working Class in Times Square, 1892-1954
The Dilemma of Thought Reform: Beijing Reformatories and the Origins of Reeducation through Labor
Aminda M. Smith, ‘The Dilemma of Thought Reform: Beijing Reformatories and the Origins of Reeducation through Labor, 1949–1957’, Modern China 39(2) (2013): 203–234.
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Abstract
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This article explores the efforts of the early People’s Republic of China (PRC) to intern and reform beggars, prostitutes, and other socially marginalized individuals as important precursors to the post-1957 system of Reeducation through Labor. It links a case study of local practice in Beijing to central government discussions about policy formulation to trace a series of co-constituted changes in the practical methods associated with thought reform as well as in the way PRC reeducators perceived the nature of their targets. It argues that Reeducation through Labor, as moniker and practice, was forged through the many contradictions between real idealism and practical reality that were discussed, debated, but never entirely resolved by the earliest PRC reeducators.
Not Safe for Work Why Feminist Pornography Matters
Abstract
Can there be such a thing as feminist pornography? Many still say no. Echoing decades of anti-pornography feminist literature, Gail Dines told the Daily Beast in 2012 that “anyone willing to feed off women’s bodies and use them as raw materials to make a profit has no right to call themselves feminists.” But many feminists, including those who make porn, disagree. Despite decades of efforts to suppress it, porn is reaching larger audiences than ever. Making porn more politically progressive for those who consume it and making sets safer for performers are critical issues for feminist intervention—and feminist pornographers have chosen to take on both.
Brokers and the Earnings of Female Sex Workers in India
Sex work: the ultimate precarious labour?
Dr Teela Sanders and Dr Kate Hardy (2013) Sex work: the ultimate precarious labour?, Criminal Justice Matters, 93:1, 16-17, DOI: 10.1080/09627251.2013.833760
Teela Sanders and Kate Hardy assess sex work within wider processes of ‘flexibilisation’
Reasonable Wages for Workers to Eliminate Unrest in Bangladesh’s Ready-made Garments (RMG) Sector
Abstract
This paper summarizes the main causes of unrest in Bangladesh’s ready-made garments (RMG) sector and how they can be resolved. It provides some background on the degree of unrest in Bangladesh’s RMG sector, focusing on six major unrests during December 2010 and June 2012 and provides some information on conflict resolution processes. The paper is based on interviews with RMG workers, management, and factory owners. It shows that low and discriminating wages are the main underlying factor of unrest in the RMG. Hence, wages should be given top most priority to evade unrest in the RMG factories, followed by the implementation of labor rights.