ABSTRACT
Since the mid-1980s, the issue of trafficking in women has been high on the international agenda. The stereotypical picture of the “victim of trafficking” runs pretty much as follows: an extremely poor, very young, “third world” woman is kidnapped or lured from her village with promises of a lucrative, respectable job overseas. Wijers and Lap-Chew’s report, grounded in the view of prostitution as work, goes a long way towards debunking many current myths about trafficking in women. Significantly, the report expands the scope of trafficking to include trafficking for domestic work and marriage. Another big myth-buster is the finding that, for sex work and domestic work, neither kidnapping nor deception about the nature of the work are common. Women who defy conventional moral codes are denied customary legal protection; in Germany, for example, “trafficking” is considered a less serious crime for a person who is “not far from prostitution”.
