economic empowerment

Community Guide: Economic Empowerment for Sex Workers

This resource is a Community Guide to the Briefing Paper: Economic Empowerment for Sex Workers. It provides an overview of the full Briefing Paper, and identifies good practice and key recommendations. 

You can download this 5-page Community Guide above. It is now available in English, French, Russian, Spanish, and Chinese.

Briefing Paper: Economic Empowerment for Sex Workers

The criminalisation of sex work creates a range of barriers for sex workers when it comes to accessing their economic rights. Sex workers face overlapping and mutually reinforcing risks, such as social marginalisation, violence and poor health, which restrict the ability of sex workers to improve their living and working conditions and to achieve economic security. Furthermore, sex workers commonly report a lack of access to bank accounts, saving schemes, loans and legal forms of credit, insurance, pensions, and other basic employment benefits.

National Case Study: Usha Multipurpose Cooperative Society Limited – Economic Empowerment for Sex Workers

Usha Multipurpose Cooperative Society Limited (USHA) is the largest and the first ever sex worker-led financial institution in South Asia, exclusively run by and for sex workers. Steered by Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC), a sex worker collective in West Bengal, India, USHA provides economic empowerment to sex workers by offering them loans at low interest rates, encouraging short and long-term savings and supporting self-employment schemes.

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When Economic Empowerment Programmes Fail Sex Workers

Sex workers are often encouraged to take part in economic empowerment programmes to help them exit sex work by requiring that they give up sex work while they learn new skills like hairdressing and sewing. Some of these programmes work but the majority of them fail sex workers to such an extent it is hard to imagine why such programmes are still considered as acceptable by some.

NSWP Publishes Asia Pacific Regional Report & Briefing Paper: Sex Workers Demonstrate Economic and Social Empowerment

The Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP) has published received funding from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the ‘Stepping Up, Stepping Out Project’ by Aids Fonds to support the development of advocacy tools around rights-based economic empowerment for sex workers.  The first year of this three-year project was coordinated by the Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers (APNSW), whose office is in Bangkok, Thailand.