Written by: Mona
Sex Work in India
In India, sex work operates informally and largely unprotected. Many sex workers come from high levels of poverty. Then, sex workers face discrimination, abuse, and criminalization that only pushes them further into poverty. These actions come from police, husbands and families, landlords, neighbors, brothel owners, and clients. Many organizations that address sex work view sex workers either as criminals or victims. Often, these “anti-trafficking” approaches miss the mark on empowering sex workers and meeting them where they are at.
One of the most widely recognized sex work organizations in India is Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC), a sex worker collective located in Sonagachi, Kolkata. Through my graduate school, I had the privilege of visiting DMSC and learning about their work. DMSC has done an excellent job creating such a strong presence that trafficking rates in the district have declined over the years. Sex trafficking still persists and is a serious issue that needs to be addressed. The role that DMSC plays is more aligned with harm reduction and advocacy for the rights of sex workers, but it cannot be done without the proper focus on anti-trafficking measures.
Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee
Originally, DMSC started out as an HIV prevention initiative and has grown substantially since then. Now, DMSC has initiatives focused on HIV prevention, advocacy, community partnership building, condom sales, USHA loan service, and unionizing locally and internationally. On our visit to DMSC, we also learned about other initiatives, including a soccer team, dance team, children’s home, and education initiatives such as after-school tutoring.
The distinguishing characteristic of DMSC is that it is a sex worker-led collective. In each geographic area where DMSC is active, sex workers are appointed to be peer educators. These women are the catalytic force that keeps DMSC running at such a large capacity. Beyond this, DMSC has developed positive community partnerships with entities such as funding organizations and the local police, which also help to sustain and protect the organization.
As a sex worker, being associated with DMSC helps to ensure safety, rights, and autonomy for the sex worker and their children. DMSC allows sex workers to stand up against stigma and take pride in their work.
Being a Child of a Sex Worker
While the pride of these sex workers is both admirable and remarkable, there is a huge stigma that is placed on sex work. Sex workers are often excluded from receiving everything from social benefits to proper health care services. Women with sex work in their backgrounds face barriers and intense shame when trying to reintegrate into their families or when looking for a different job. In India, being the child of a sex worker carries just as much stigma. These children face barriers in attending school and being bullied by classmates.
Widely circulated views on being a child of a sex worker are not helpful either. In 2004, a popular documentary was released called Born into Brothels, which was set in Kolkata’s red light district. In the documentary, cameras were secretly secured on children living in the brothels, and the footage was used to make the film. When the documentary was released, it received strong criticism and protest from members of DMSC, who felt that the messages\in the documentary wrongly villainized the women in the brothels. Films like this reinforce the situations that the sex workers and their children are in, frame the filmers as the hero, ignore preexisting collective efforts, continue to associate sex work with sex trafficking, and represent parents as incompetent and cruel people
The nature of this documentary falls in line with often-reflected Western NGO marketing narratives. It is not that using pictures of really poor or really happy children for marketing is necessarily the issue, but it is more that it must be considered how these underlying messages impact their chances of securing their own desired rights for themselves.
Dignifying the Experience of a Child of a Sex Worker
In 2005, a collective of the children of sex workers called Amra Pradatik (AP), which stands for “We are Foot Soldiers”, was formed to advocate for the rights of sex workers and the children of sex workers. AP seeks to advocate for the rights of the children of sex workers as well as all marginalized groups of children around the world. As a branch of DMSC, this collective consists of over 1,500 members from the city of Kolkata and its surrounding suburbs.
In response to the common “raid, rescue, and rehabilitate” approach, many past AP leaders have shared the sentiment that even if they feel the weight of stigma, the solution never includes separation from their mothers. Clearly, AP and its leaders have empowered a generation of youth in the world of brothels to fight for their rights rather than conform to the system.
In one instance, an 18-year-old was refused an admission form for a board exam because they had said in a TV interview that they were a child of a sex worker. It was not long until AP rallied and got them their forms. In another instance, an AP member was harassed by a landlord after their mother died, and AP took the steps to make sure they were not evicted. Furthermore, members of AP took action to prevent child trafficking in their district by following rumors about a girl locked in a room. Within hours, they located and rescued her. Now, many of these members are pursuing higher education, including Master’s in Social Work degrees, proving that you can live in a brothel without becoming a sex worker or pimp.
On my trip to Kolkata, I had the chance to visit the children’s home in Baripur, right outside the city. One morning, we sat at a nearby river coloring with the children. After listing off their favorite American and K-Pop songs, we asked about their favorite movie. The children all chimed in and said “Gangubai!”. Gangubai Kathiawadi is a popular biographical Bollywood movie that chronicles the life of Gangubai Kothewali, who was a sex worker and social activist for sex work communities in India. The response of these children inspired awe in all of us. They took great pride in the work that their mothers did and did not bear the shame that society had tried to imprint on them. When they could have looked to Born into Brothels as a way of defining their experience as the child of a sex worker, they chose to look through the lens of Gangubai.
This is the lens that the children of sex workers in Kolkata want to be seen through. To dignify their experience is to acknowledge this and seek ways to walk alongside them in this. Any interventions in sex work communities must consider these perspectives.
Advocating for the Decriminalization of Sex Work
Thus, the most sure way of securing rights for sex workers and their children is through the decriminalization of sex work. Rights for these children’s mothers directly translates to their own individual rights.
In 2022, Belgium decriminalized sex work. This helped to reduce the rates of forced sex that were happening among sex workers and helped to create safer working conditions. In 2024, labor laws were passed in Belgium that granted sex workers rights to insurance, pensions, sick leave, and maternity leave. These laws also targeted traffickers by requiring a criminal background check on employers, requiring employment contracts, and giving the sex worker the power to turn down customers. This directly addresses the individual rights of sex workers as well as the larger structures that exploit them in their work. Though not every country has the same cultural, social, and economic structures around sex work, Belgium’s advancement in policy can serve as a model of what policy reform can look like in India and other countries across the world.
References
Bettiza, S. (2024 November 30). Belgium’s Sex Workers Get Maternity Leave and Pensions Under World-First Law.BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5ygn31ypdlo
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