Exploitation of Women in the Developing World

The modern world today is proud to recognize the equality that has been acknowledged between age, gender, and race. Women are beginning to be treated as equals with men, in new customs, lifestyle, society, and economy. Today, women are freer and are liberated from their traditional roles as housewives, and are pursuing their hopes and dreams. However, this is not the case in many regions of the world. In the developing countries, thousands of females are dehumanized by prostitution and the trafficking of women and children is dehumanizing which serves only to benefit men. It exploits and violates the rights of women in the developing world. Sexual exploitation, which includes sex tourism, bride trade, temporary marriages, and sexual violence such as rape, incest, and sexual harassment, has escalated throughout the 20th century and has become an enormous concern.

Today, slavery is defined as a "social and economic relationship in which a person is controlled through violence or its threat, paid nothing, and economically exploited...sex trafficking is a modern day form of slavery" (Bales). The reason why governments do not help the women in prostitution is because the sex industry generates profits amounting to billions of dollars, necessary to pay off the country's debts. The governments convince themselves, and the public, that they help facilitate women's employment opportunities and statistics by legitimizing prostitution.

Politically vulnerable and economically weak countries were opened up as tourist destinations, and large numbers or male tourists bought sexual adventure in foreign countries as the businesses of the sex tourism were established. The promotion of sex tourism generated generous amounts of income for the sex industry as well as for the government, due to the vacations that people from developed countries take to take advantage of these foreign prostitutes. In some cultures, the established role of females has been long facilitated by the traditional systems of religion, resulting to prostitution. Trafficking is assisted by recruiters (who accompany the woman to the new country), the traffickers, and the pimps who are in charge of the brothels and sex clubs that the women end up in. Although there is an extensive amount of evidence that these people are in charge of the continuation of prostitution, it is mostly only women who are arrested, charged, and prosecuted in countries where prostitution is illegal.

The all-encompassing power of the sex industry has devastated the economic and financial status of women in the developing countries. Governments in the developing world encourage the sex industry due to the profit they gain to pay their countries' debts, and are uninterested in the women's well-being.

Women made vulnerable by poverty are most susceptible to the sex industry because they lack the resources, the education, and the economic alternatives to pursue other work possibilities. The lack of education diminishes women's potential to gain paid employment, and desperately consent to prostitution as their survival strategy.

The governments of the developing world encourage and utilize the sex trade industry as a progress strategy to repay millions of dollars of debt to international corporations. There are also economic incentives for the governments of both the exporting and importing countries to ignore the trafficking in women, and the governments are relatively uninterested in the women's well-being.

The sex industry promotes gender inequality and racial discrimination: foreign women maintain the lowest position in the sex trade hierarchy.

The sex industry focuses on the women and children that are devastated by poverty. One can argue that prostitution is a survival strategy for women in absolute poverty, but it is the sex industry that locks them in poverty. Sex traders recruit women by promising them jobs, a glamorous life, a good marriage, and money. For example, the brothels of India hold between 100,000 and 160,000 Nepalese women and girls, 35 percent were taken on the false pretext of marriage or a good job. The deceived women are then sold off by pimps to the sex industry, and when they discover what their 'job' entailed, they already owe thousands of dollars to their sex owners. They end up trapped trying to repay the money they never collected, and usually are forced to work full time in the sex industry for years, even decades, keeping them in poverty.

"Sexual exploitation preys on women and children made vulnerable by poverty, by economic development policies and practices, and by traffickers who capitalize on restricted migration policies." (Janice G. Raymond, Co-executive director of Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW))

The sex workers are slaves paying back their debts to the brothel owners. They are bonded by debt for years, not only working to earn back the money that they were sold for, but also the interest. According to Kevin Bales, there are two types of debt bondage. The first type is when a slave's life and labour is used as the collateral to acquire loans, forcing them to work towards the payment of these loans plus the interest. The second kind of debt bondage is when victims become bonded slaves when they violate the loan agreements made by the brothel owners and the sex traders.

Trafficking and prostitution are what makes the majority of the sex industry, but it should never be recognized as a job or legitimated as work. However, the trafficking system continues to be supported by certain governments, who view prostitution and trafficking as a voluntary choice of work. U.N. reports cite 700,000 to two million women and children internationally are trafficked each year into the sex industry and for labor, with 50,000 into the United States; the sex industry is a huge business that brings enormous revenues to the country's finance. The United Nations estimates that trafficking is a 5-7 billion U.S. dollar operation annually. Developing countries view the workers in the industry (including the women and child prostitutes) as sex workers, who have acquired real jobs.

"Trafficking is a system in which most women are exploited and victimized--a system that is allowed to flourish in part because academics and others are propping up the sex industry by romanticizing prostitution and trafficking as voluntary migration for sex work." (Raymond)

Prostitutes in the developing countries and countries in financial and political dilemmas are trafficked to developed and financially well off countries. Mostly it is women who are poor and/or uneducated who turn to prostitution as a survival strategy. Since males are considered of higher value than females in many cultures

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