The meaning of the purchase: desire, demand, and the commerce of sex by Elizabeth Bernstein
Feminists and other scholars have debated theoretically what exactly is being purchased in the prostitution transaction and whether sex can be “a service like any other”, but they have scarcely tackled these questions empirically. This article draws upon field observations of and interviews with male clients of commercial sex-workers and state agents entrusted with regulating them to probe the meanings given to different types of commercial sexual exchange. Manifested by client...
Read MoreUsing human rights to improve maternal and neonatal health: history, connections and a proposed practical approach by Mindy Jane Roseman
We describe the historical development of how maternal and neonatal mortality in the developing world came to be seen as a public-health concern, a human rights concern, and ultimately as both, leading to the development of approaches using human rights concepts and methods to advance maternal and neonatal health. We describe the different contributions of the international community, women’s health advocates and human rights activists. We briefly present a recent effort, developed by WHO...
Read MoreTrafficked? Filipino Hostesses in Tokyo’s Nightlife Industry by Rhacel Parrenas
After a few months in Tokyo, I became known as ate, meaning big sister, to man of the Filipino contract workers whom I met in the course of my research. Most were in their early twenties, but those older than me, including those who had returned to Japan more than ten times as contract workers and who were now in their late thirties, still called be “big sister.” They did so not necessarily out of respect but because they often forgot their real age, as they consistently have to...
Read MoreSexual Labors: Interdisciplinary Perspectives Toward Sex as Work by Rhacel Parrenas with Eileen Boris and Stephanie Gilmore
What constitutes ‘sex’ and defines ‘labor’ has varied across time and space, we have learned over the last 35 years through an explosion of monographs and articles in the history and sociology of sexuality and labor studies. But rarely has the new labor studies, with its attention to gender, race, and ethnicity and its consideration of unpaid as well as paid work, put sexual labors at the center of its focus. Even the rich literature on prostitution more likely has come out of women’s...
Read MoreThe indentured mobility of migrant women: How gendered protectionist laws lead Filipina hostesses to forced sexual labor by Rhacel Parrenas
In 2004, the U.S. State Department labeled migrant Filipina hostesses as sex trafficked persons. As the U.S. Trafficking in persons report (U.S. Department of State, 2004: 14) claimed, On arrival at their destination, victims are stripped of their passports and travel documents and forced into situations of sexual exploitation or bonded servitude. . . . For example, it is reported that Japan issued 55,000 entertainer visas to women from the Philippines in 2003, many of whom are suspected of...
Read MoreReview: Children in the Global Sex Trade by Rhacel Parrenas
With Children in the Global Sex Trade, Davidson adds to her growing corpus of works on globalization and prostitution a study on children in the global sex trade. Children in the Global Sex Trade
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