Introduction to Special Issue: Sexual Commerce and the Global Flow of Bodies, Desires, and Social Policies by Elizabeth Bernstein
In anticipation of the 2006 World Cup games in Munich, a broad international coalition of feminist and faith-based activists joined together to protest Germany’s world-renowned system of legalized prostitution. Although Germany’s system of licensed, regulated, and taxed prostitution has been regarded by some commentators as a progressive exemplar of sex workers’ rights, a diverse spectrum of antiprostitution activists were able to ignite a fervor regarding an anticipated epidemic of sex...
Read MoreSex for the Middle Classes by Elizabeth Bernstein
Drawing from fieldwork and interviews with middle-class sex workers, this essay considers the relationship between the class-privileged women and men who are increasingly finding their way into sex work and more generalized patterns of economic restructuring. How has the emergence of new communications technologies transformed the meaning and experience of sexual commerce for sex workers and their customers? What is the connection between the new ‘respectability’ of sexual commerce and the...
Read MoreUNRISD Research and Policy Brief: Religion, Politics, and Gender Equality
Contrary to modernist predictions that religion would retreat into a private zone of worship and practice, recent decades have seen religion become increasingly salient on the political stage worldwide. Does this matter? From the point of view of women’s rights and gender equality, much is at stake. UNRISD research shows that politicized religion impinges on women’s rights in problematic ways. The challenge to gender equality comes not just from fundamentalist agendas, but also from those...
Read MoreMilitarized Humanitarianism Meets Carceral Feminism: The Politics of Sex, Rights, and Freedom in Contemporary Antitrafficking Campaigns by Elizabeth Bernstein
During a blusteryNew York City winter in the final weeks of 2008, two very different cinematic events focused on the politics of gender, sexuality, and human rights stood out for their symmetry. The first event, a benefit screening of Call and Response (2008), a just-released “rockumentary” about human trafficking made by the Christian rockmusician- cum-filmmaker Justin Dillon, showed at a hip downtown cinema to a packed and enthusiastic mixed-gender audience of young, predominantly white...
Read MoreProtecting HIV-positive women’s human rights: recommendations for the United States National HIV/AIDS Strategy by Aziza Ahmed with Catherine Hanssens and Brook Kelly
To bring the United States in line with prevailing human rights standards, its National HIV/AIDS Strategy will need to explicitly commit to a human rights framework when developing programmes and policies that serve the unaddressed needs of women. This paper focuses on two aspects of the institutionalized mistreatment of people with HIV: 1) the criminalization of their consensual sexual conduct; and 2) the elimination of informed and documented consensual participation in their diagnosis...
Read MoreHIV and Women: Incongruent Policies, Criminal Consequences by Aziza Ahmed
UN Women must take an aggressive role in the standardization of laws and policies at the global and national level where their incongruence has negative and often criminal consequences for the health and lives of mean and girls. The is article focuses in on thee such examples: opt-out testing for HIV, criminalization of the vertical transmissions, and the new World Health Organization guidelines on breastfeeding. HIV and...
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