A quarterly international newsletter on sexuality, sexual health, and sexuality education.
Volume 2, Issue 2 - Fall/Winter 2002
The Rights of Women in Prostitution
Since the early 1990s, women in prostitution have borne the brunt of the HIV epidemic in India. On one hand, they suffer high levels of infection and re-infection. On the other, HIV intervention programs have labeled them vectors of infection.
In this context, SANGRAM began working in 1992 in the Sangli district in Western Maharashtra. Many health prevention programs regard women in prostitution as victims with little capacity to change anything let alone their health status. Many programs based on this approach treat such sex workers as vectors to be targeted.
SANGRAM began a peer-based condom intervention program with the philosophy that emphasizes women’s sense of identity as a community. The peer educators are women in the business as well as in the same community. Many share similar difficult stories of poverty, desertion, abuse, widowhood, or lack of life choices.
The peer-education program is based on two underlying premises. One is that insiders are more effective than outsiders in reaching the community. The other is that women in prostitution can reliably enforce condom use for their own protection.
The education program includes prevention and treatment. Part of the peer educator’s work involves preventing HIV through peer education and condom distribution as well as training and counseling women who are unable to enforce condom use. Another part is helping women with sexually transmitted infections and other health problems to access medical care and related services.
Three key concepts characterize SANGRAM’s peer education program: empowering, women-centered, and process oriented. Given the organization’s emphasis on processes and on strengthening the community from within, it is natural that the building of a collective was a next step.
In 1996, the peer education program broadened into VAMP—the Veshya AIDS Muqabla Parishad—a collective of women in prostitution. VAMP aims to consolidate a common identity among women and empower them to assert their rights and to work to create a safer and more enjoyable working and living environment.
As part of its responsibilities,VAMP now runs peer programs in eight districts in India with help from SANGRAM. Although the two entities are like mother and daughter, each has its own identity. VAMP is registered as a collective with its own board drawn from women in prostitution.While it is still guided by SANGRAM, VAMP has an overall vision to someday function independently. Apart from running the condom distribution program, VAMP represents the interest of its constituents in many ways. It mediates community disputes, lobbies with the police, helps women access government systems, and develops leadership potential.
Police harassment is a particularly critical issue for all women in prostitution. Not only are they routinely abused and beaten up by police, but they are also randomly picked up on charges of soliciting, which is a crime under the Indian Penal Code. Before the formation of the collective, women could not do anything about police harassment. Now they are treated with greater respect when they approach police officials for help. In some cases, VAMP has negotiated an end to police hostility and raids.
In early 2002, VAMP bought land in the border town of Nippani in the Belgaum district of Karnataka state. Since the collective had finally bought its own space, regular meetings that had taken place in Sangli for 10 years now took place in Nippani. Unfortunately, local thugs and policemen decided that the women attending the meetings were defiling the “pure and sacred” space and used force and violence to stop the meetings. They threatened to kill the leaders and to destroy the vehicles bringing the women to the meetings each week. The police turned a blind eye.
In response, SANGRAM and VAMP organized a coalition of organizations to send petitions to the police and state authorities in the affected district and held a press conference to take appropriate action against the police officers and to provide security for the women and their families who were forced to leave their home town because of threats of violence.
This does not mean that all VAMP members are now able to confront the police without harassment. However, women are now aware that they do have the ability to negotiate a situation and that empowerment can prove limitless in the change they can make for themselves, their families, and their communities.
For more information, contact:
SANGRAM
B-11 Akshay Apartments
Chintamani Nagar
Sangli 416416
India
Phone: 91.0233.311.644
E-mail: vamp@vsnl.com
meenaseshu@yahoo.com
Web Master: siecus@siecus.org