Projeto
Challenging urban sex workers? multiple exclusions in Brazil: a network to share knowledge, confront stigma, and promote community-led responses
Resumo
In Brazil, widespread prejudice and stigma against sex workers foreground their social marginalisation, limited access to healthcare provisions, and abuse by the police. These factors combine with diffused poverty, racial and gender discrimination to subject sex workers to high levels of physical, sexual, and emotional violence, enhancing their vulnerability to HIV/AIDS. This is especially the case in large urban areas which see the highest concentrations of sex workers, often working and living in the most deprived areas. Although prostitution in Brazil is recognized as an occupation, everything surrounding it is criminalized and it is extremely difficult to practice it without breaking the law. The Brazilian sex worker movement is and has been very active in its service provision and advocacy, however, since the far-right government of Jair Bolsonaro announced its objective in 2019 to punish sexual practices and identities considered to be non-normative, sex worker activists have been silenced, funds for service provision have been denied, and sex workers have experienced increasing institutional violence. In this context of heightened punitivism, this network aims to make a timely and urgent intervention to examine the challenges that urban sex workers face in Brazil making them vulnerable to violence, discrimination and multiple exclusions and to examine ways in which an environment that guarantees them a life in dignity can be achieved. The network will offer an opportunity to build research capacity and develop the use of participatory methods to co-create solutions that address the inequalities faced by urban sex workers in the country.
Responsáveis
Membros
FLAVIA DO BONSUCESSO TEIXEIRA
LAURA MURRAY
SONIA ONUFER CORREA