ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a movement of sex workers' collectives in India which actively addresses gender relations in their efforts to achieve empowerment of sex workers and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) prevention. It examines how sex workers' collectives have challenged gender relations as part of their HIV-related work, in the interest of assessing the prospects for current scaling up of community mobilization projects to address gender inequalities at a structural level. The sex worker collectives have largely been made possible by availability of HIV/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes (AIDS) funding, and HIV prevention has typically been their initial activity. The chapter also examines the extent to which this has happened, and prospects for the future of such efforts, by setting the context of HIV, gender relations, sex work, and HIV interventions in India. It explores a structural perspective on gender, which prioritizes efforts to challenge the fundamental social issues that lead to gender inequalities; that is, which targets strategic gender interests.
