Sex trade workers in Bangladesh : an exploratory study of the sex trade workers' movement and patriarchy, 18th century to 2002

ix, 176 leaves ; 28 cm.Includes abstract.'Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the joint Women's Studies Programme at Mount Saint Vincent University, Dalhousie University, Saint Mary's University.'Includes bibliographical references (leaves 168-176).This thesis explores the situation of sex workers in Bangladesh through a feminist holistic analysis, and using a feminist methodology, it traces the status change of sex workers from the pre-colonial era to the present time. While sex workers' status deteriorated with the introduction of capitalism and British colonialism in the 19 th century, in recent times, sex workers have gained some significant political and socio-economic rights in Bangladeshi society. This thesis examines how a collective women's movement in the 1980s, stemming out of the UN Decade for Women and global feminisms have helped sex workers create a political platform to demand their women's human rights. The illegal evictions in 1999 of sex workers from the Tanbazar brothel has been examined in this thesis to analyze how national and international organizations, women's organizations and civil society responded to the evictions and through a collective movement created a political platform to demand sex workers' human rights. This thesis also proposes two overlapping and alternative approaches sex workers might consider using at the present time to look forward and effectively integrate their voices, concerns and needs into the policy and decision making arena and into the larger socio-economic and political realm in Bangladeshi society

Sex Workers and Condom Use-the Political Economy of HIV/AIDS in Bangladesh

A study was undertaken in Madaripur brothel to understand condom use reality within the social context of the commercial sex workers' (CSW) lives in brothel and to critically analyze BRAC's HIV/AIDS programme's effectiveness in condom promotion. It was found that the chukris (bonded sex workers) were controlled by the sardarnis (madam) and the sardarnis did not promote condom use among the chukris as most of them (sardarnis) only bothered about money and about keeping on high client flow to the chukris, in context of most of the clients refusing to use condoms and even willing to pay double the rate for not using condoms. On the other hand, the older sex workers were found less in demand, and did not have the financial power to bargain condom use with the clients. The HIV/AIDS programme, one of the two wings of BRAC's brothel based intervention was found over-shadowed by and preoccupied with the activities of the other wing, ‘Microfinance’. Furthermore, for distributing condom the brothel based staff targeted only the bariwalis and sardarnis who belonged to the top of brothel hierarchy, and never tried to reach the chukris who consisted of the majority of the brothel community. Moreover, though BRAC was supposed to provide condom to the CSWs at subsidized rate (100 condoms for Tk. 10), the brothel based staff delivered it at much higher price, Tk. 20-25. Thus, BRAC's brothel based HIV/AIDS intervention was facing the opposite way of promoting condom use among the brothel based CSWs.[Working Paper No. 4]Madaripur, commercial sex workers, sardarnis, condoms, HIV/AIDS, Microfinance