Poverty, gender inequality and lack of opportunities push single mothers towards sex trade: Dr. Rica Lamar
SHILLONG: There are as many as 273 female sex workers who are single mothers out of a total of 699 female sex workers registered with Manbha Foundation, its director, Dr. Rica Lamar said on Monday.
Quoting from the reports of the targeted intervention project taken up by Manbha Foundation in Shillong, Dr. Lamar said that out of the 379 female sex workers, 173 are single mothers (22 are separated, four are widowed while 147 are living with regular partners).
She also revealed that the average numbers of children that these single mothers have are between two to five.
“The female sex workers are home based, hotel based and also street based,” she said while presenting her paper on the emerging issues of single mother leading to sex work and substance abuse during the two-day consultations on issues related to single mothers held at the Conference Hall of the Indian Council for Social Science and Research, NEHU Campus, which got underway on Monday.
Dr. Lamar also said that in Jowai, out of the 320 female sex workers registered with the Foundation, 100 are single mothers. “A majority of them are Dhaba based or highway based sex workers,” she said.
Dr. Lamar pointed out that structural determinants such as poverty, gender inequality and lack of viable opportunities have forced single mothers to join the sex trade.
“Most of the women on the street are there to keep their families together,” she added.
According to her, 90 per cent of the single mothers who have turned to the sex trade have a history of marital abuse and adultery by their spouses. Some of them had alcoholic husbands and were made to endure violence by their spouses.
“Repeated violence leads to feelings of humiliation and entrapment. Many of these single mothers have said that at the time of marriage, they gave a high degree of importance to their relationship with expectations of emotional, physical and financial security for them and their children. A breakdown in the relationship leads to a sense of rejection and devaluation thus reducing their self esteem and a loss of a robust and authentic sense of self. These women experience anger towards the promiscuous behavior of their husbands and express their anger by resorting to a similar behavior and thus started the journey towards becoming sex workers,” she said.
Dr. Lamar also pointed out that some of them had husbands who used them as sex objects only but did not fulfill any of their duties as husbands and fathers.
“This has made them use men for sexual gratification and to generate money,” she added.