Sex and Work By Devaki Jain

Anu's Chatter......

The concern of those who are living in the less developed continents of the world such as Africa and South Asia is that what drives women and children into offering sex as a means of earning a livelihood is not personal choice but either poverty or extreme violence at home.

These were the lines that goaded me to read the entire article in a go!

When I read this moving article in todays Times  Middle Page friends, I  wanted  to know more about this person called as Devaki Jain  and women trafficking...!  I googled  and  found  that this woman was a feminist and a social worker .... ....The study  reveals the shameful facts about  the  Trafficking  of a Girl child  and Women in India  and world over. 

 According to Devaki's Studies.....

A 2003/2004 report on trafficking in women and children prepared by the Institute of Social Sciences in collaboration with the National Human Rights Commission and the UNIFEM interviewed 4,006 persons involved in trafficking. The study presents the following findings under the rubric Commercial Sexual Exploitation (CSE)

5 Valerie Kozel, and Barbara Parker 'A Profile and Diagnostic of the Poverty in Uttar Pradesh', World Bank,2001,. Paper presented at a Poverty Monitoring and Evaluation Workshop in New Delhi, hosted by the Government's Planning Commission and the World Bank, 11 January, 2002

68 percent of the victims were lured by promises of jobs and 16.8 percent by promises of marriage and 70 percent of the victims were from deprived sections of society.

- 198 brothels had 615 girls who were 17-18 years of age, 82 brothels had 245 girls who were less than 16 years of age and the highest demand is for virgins.

- At the time of interviews, 860 children were being exploited in the brothels.

Children make the most money for their exploiters in this profitable business. 44.3 percent of those in brothels started their life there when they were less than 18 years, 22.9 percent when less than 16 years, and 60.6 percent were married as children!

Here is another way of looking at Amartya Sen's "missing women": An average of 22,480 women and 44,476 children are reported missing in India every year, out of which 5,452 women and 11,008 children continue to remain untraced. It is suggested that these are the people who are trafficked, as they are sucked into untraceable brothels.

The 2004 UN "World Survey on the Role of Women in Development" says:

"The number of international migrants has risen to about 175 million in 2000, or 2.9 per cent of the world's population, from about 75 million, or 2.5 per cent of the world's population, in 1960. The proportion of women migrants during the same period rose to 49 per cent, from 46.6 per cent. . . . Women may believe that they have legitimate jobs in the new country, only to find that they have been trapped into prostitution, sweatshop work or what are considered other contemporary forms of slavery. The survey notes that "the trafficking of people for prostitution and forced labour is one of the fastest-growing areas of international criminal activity and one that is of increasing concern to the international community."6

Like the practice of aborting female foetuses, trafficking in women cuts across caste and religion, as surveys of sex workers show, for example in Sona Gachi in Kolkota.