Sexual Laborers and Entrepreneurial Women: Gendering Sex Worker Activism in Bangalore, India

• In Event: 175 - Section on Sex and Gender Paper Session. Gender Activism and the Global South

Abstract

Sex workers occupy a highly variable position in feminist organizing: they have been positioned, at different times and in different contexts, as victims in need of rescue and as vanguards for sexual liberation. Focusing on two sex worker organizations working within (or against) HIV/AIDS programs in Bangalore, India, I argue that organizations’ gendered ideologies drove the distinct social movement alliances and approaches each organization chose to pursue. The Sangha espoused an ideology of respectable femininity and social entrepreneurship, implemented through corporate management practices and an underlying commitment to market approaches to health care provision. The Union, by contrast, espoused an ideology of sexual labor politics, implemented through movement-based strategies, with an underlying commitment to social citizenship for marginalized groups. The Sangha focused on surveillance and social services and largely eschewed advocacy, while the Union advocated for both recognition and redistribution from the state. In this way, the distinct ways in which each organization’s activist ideology was gendered shaped their subsequent social movement alliances and political goals.

Author

• Gowri Vijayakumar, University of California-Berkeley