| There are different narratives about sex workers in both public discourse and scholarly literature. It is critical to explore the most important voices about the nature and meaning of sex work, associated challenges, and needed resources: the voices of the workers' themselves. These perspectives can inform broader debates about sex work, and generate ideas about provision of resources for sex workers. The purpose of the present research study was to understand Indian women sex workers' experiences related to sex work, gender, and violence within the socio-cultural and political context in which they work. Twelve women were recruited through a sex-worker advocacy group in Kolkata, a large urban city in India for qualitative interviewing. Using semi-structured interviews, the participant women were asked open-ended questions related to how they started as sex workers and how they make meaning of their experiences, among others. A qualitative thematic analyses of the women's narratives yielded five major themes and seven subthemes (i) life conditions leading to sex work, (ii) dual pride, independence, control (pride in working and being able to provide for themselves and their families, pride in providing a service to the society, ambivalence), (iii) worker rights (wanting recognition and respect for their work, improvement of working conditions), (iv) women's experience of violence and subsequent meaning making, and (iv) salience of intimate interpersonal relations (hurt related to relational unfulfillment, satisfaction in intimate interpersonal connections). Unlike the understanding of psychological trauma in Western psychological literature as being caused by a violation of individual's physical or psychological integrity, the women in this study described traumatic events as resulting from relational role unfulfillment. Participants also challenged the narrative of forced victimhood for sex workers through their expression of pride from being in control of their own body and having economic power. The findings have implications for understanding the life of sex workers through intersecting identities based on class, gender, and culture, and for developing programs that support their needs. |
