350 Sex Workers
Organize for greater safety. Working together and supporting
each other can help sex workers reduce the threat of violence
from clients, police, and pimps. Join with other sex workers to
plan how you can support and protect each other.
I told him “No
condom, no sex”
and now that I
earn some money
doing hair, I can
say “no” and still
pay my bills.
Learn new skills. You can
work to organize programs
that teach reading and writing
or job skills. Sometimes
sex workers can teach each
other new skills, or it may
be possible to get help from
people in your community
who can be teachers.
When a sex worker has other
skills, she can earn some money
doing other jobs. She then has
more choice over which man to
have sex with, or she can refuse a
client if she does not feel safe.
Create a loan fund. A group of sex workers in Nairobi,
Kenya, joined their money to create a loan fund for their
members. Many use the fund to pay their children’s school
fees. Other groups have used loan funds to help each other
set up small businesses so they can earn money in other
ways besides sex work.
Many groups of sex workers are trying to change the negative ways other
people think about them. For example, a sex workers’ organization in Calabar,
Nigeria does not allow members to fight in the streets or in the brothel.
Members are also not allowed to use language or wear clothes that may offend
the community. By changing the things that had made it easy for the community
to criticize sex workers, they hope that people will begin to understand that sex
workers are just women doing a job to survive.
Where Women Have No Doctor 2012