Sex+Work+in+India

Indian culture is embedded in collectivism with strong beliefs around family, caste system, and togetherness, with a view that sexuality is religiously influenced (Middleton, 2002). India also holds cultural ideologies around honor, shame, segregation, and purity where women were used to define the boundaries between castes based on the social areas and activities they were involved in (Shaman, 2007).

The state formerly supported the revenue that the world’s oldest profession of women providing entertainment to men of singing, dancing, and sexual services that were culturally sanctioned (Shaman, 2007). These women held social and religious status for their physical attractiveness and sensual talents. Overtime, sex work in India became complex and culturally ambiguous overtime rather than socially and religiously sanctioned as in the past (Orchard, 2011).

Devadasis are known as servants of God who are women who work in a temple who provide sexual services to men who in turn give a monetary donation (Donnan & Magowan, 2011). These women established great wealth and were privileged in learning how to read and write as well as training in music and dance that were unavailable to women in traditional Hindu marriages (Sreenivas, 2011). They were able to be the head of their own household, an exception to the patriarchal order of India, and able to adopt children outside of marriage.

Shaman (2007) studied the difference between prostitutes and devadasis as it relates to Indian sociopolitical structure and cultural values. Women were in both types of sex work as a means for individuation and expression of sexuality that deviates from the ideology of Hindu women’s purity and conjugal relationship’s purpose for patriarchal lineage (Donnan & Magowan, 2011).

The Contagious Diseases Act of 1868 did not apply to devadasis and the government did not intervene until the Madras Hindu Religious Endowments Act of 1929 no longer protected the devadasis system under religious and cultural sanctions (Orchard, 2011).

British colonial rule took over Southern India leading to a reform of moral and social order that had been sustaining the devadasis tradition in the way their legal status allowed them to adopt female children to train for the temple (Sreenivas, 2011). Rulers began criminalizing this as trafficking while the prostitution remained legal. Little legal attention was paid to the patrons of the temples amongst the changes with the reform. Activists and nationalists viewed the devadasis practice as women’s oppression and encouraged heterosexual conjugal relationships which also opposed child marriage, caste systems, and wives’ subservient status that were a historical norm (Sreenivas, 2011).

Devadasis did not like the changes for going against their faith and privilege. While, loan programs and health camps were designed to help devadasis out of their occupations which used the economic benefits to convince them out of the line of sex work, some even made them swear over Hindu text to quit sex work. Despite the support in the form of increased condom distribution from new organizations, devadasis still experience socio-sexual and health inequalities (Orchard, 2011).

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An Indian feminism movement in the 1970s attempted to create change towards collectives for sex workers in India to promote education and empowerment rather than the programs that try to rescue and rehab sex workers out of the occupation (Orchard, 2011). Many different typologies of sex work have been identified to help organize HIV programming with the problem of the high rates of HIV transmission involving female sex workers in India (Buzdugan, Halli, Cowan, 2009). These typologies point out the wide variety of sex work in different parts of India as well as globalization’s effect on the local customs and institutions dealing with sexuality (Middleton, 2002).

Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Connittee (DMSC) sex workers’ collective in one of Asia’s largest red light districts in Calcutta, India that recognizes sex work as legitimate work, has helped 65,000 workers through the Indian government’s implementation of HIV interventions and medical clinics (Ghose, 2012). Resources include support for sex workers families and community that fits within India’s collectivistic culture. However, organizations such as the Immoral Trafficking Prevention Act (ITPA) “legalizes sex work, but criminalizes the sharing of earnings from the trade with anyone” making it difficult to reap the economic benefits in providing for one’s family through sex work complicated (Sharma, 2007).

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The STD/HIV Intervention Program (SHIP) that is the best known sex worker project in Calcutta, India provided legal and social protection (Orchard, 2011). The Belgaum Integrated Rural Development Society (BIRDS) originated to support agricultural occupations began identifying the issues of poverty, ill health, and illiteracy as motivators for women to remain in sex work, implementing programs at the structural and organizational levels to follow through on an individual level.

The literature about sex work in India is largely funded by HIV prevention programs and often published by researchers from other cultures (Mahapatra //et al//, 2013). Knowledge about cultural differences gained from people outside of the culture being studied are often written from the lens of their own cultural values which bring about confounding factors for the biases and perpetuation of cultural stereotypes about India’s oppression of women through the use of religion without fully understanding the context and meanings of the population.

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**References** Bharat, S., Mahapatra, B., Roy, S., & Saggurti, N. (2013). Are female sex workers able to negotiate condom use with Male clients? //The Case of Mobile FSWs in Four High HIV Prevalence States of India.// //Plos ONE//, //8//(6), 1-8. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0068043 Buzdugan, R., Halli, S. S., & Cowan, F. M. (2009). The female sex work typology in India in the context of HIV/AIDS. //Tropical Medicine & International Health//, //14//(6), 673-687. doi:10.1111/j.1365-3156.2009.02278.x Donnan, H., & Magowan, F. (2010). //Anthropology of sex.// New York, NY:Berg Publishers, Ltd. Ghose, T. (2012). Teaching about a sex work community in India: Toward a postcolonial pedagogy. //Journal of Social Work Education//, //48//(4), 707-726. Mahapatra, B., Lowndes, C. M., Mohanty, S., Gurav, K., Ramesh, B. M., Moses, S., & ... Alary, M. (2013). Factors associated with risky sexual practices among female sex workers in Karnataka, India. //Plos ONE//, //8//(4), 1-8. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0062167 Middleton, D. R. (2002). //Exotics and erotics: Human cultural and sexual diversity.// Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, Inc. Nanda, S., & Warms, R. (2014). Cultural Anthropology, 11th Ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. (10th edition is also acceptable) Nanda. S. (2000). //Gender diversity: Crosscultural variations.// Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, Inc. Orchard, T. (2011). “What is the use of getting a cow if you can’t make any money from it?: The reproduction of inequality within contemporary social reform of devadais. InKelly, P., & Dewey, S. //Policing Pleasure : Sex Work, Policy, and the State in Global Perspective.// New York: New York University Press. 172-188. Sanders, T., Kingston, S., & Hardy, K. (2010). //New Sociologies of Sex Work//. Farnham, Surrey, England: Ashgate Pub Sharma, K. (2007). The social world of prostitutes and devadasis: A study of the social structure and its politics in early modern India. //Journal of International Women's Studies, 9//(1), 297-310. Sreenivas, M. (2011). Creating conjugal subjects: Devadasis and the politics of marriage in colonial madras presidency. //Feminist Studies, 37//(1), 63-92. Torri, M. (2009). Abuse of Lower Castes in South India: The Institution of Devadasi. Journal Of International Women's Studies, 11(2), 31-48.