ABSTRACT

Since it has become more widely realized that HIV infection could be heterosexually transmitted, renewed attention has been paid to the role and patterns of behaviour of women sex workers. In the work of some commentators and policy-makers in the mid-1980s, women in the sex industry were promptly, and with numerous historical precedents, cast as putative vectors of disease. In the first part of this chapter we briefly draw on this material to reflect both on how women sex workers continue to be objects of vilification, regarded as morally and causally responsible for the spread of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including AIDS; and on how this very process of vilification enhances the vulnerability to infection of the women themselves, their clients and others in the wider community. We then define and assess the potential of operational, political and structural changes to empower women sex workers better to safeguard their own health, a process of special salience in the context of HIV/AIDS. The roles and relationships of sex workers, prostitute groups and the women’s movement will also be addressed as part of a consideration of likely agencies of change.