Harsh realities: Reasons for women's involvement in sex work in India

Abstract

This study documents the reasons and processes for involvement of women into sex work in India. The 
study is based on in-depth interviews with a cross-section of commercial sex workers in four Indian 
states – Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. It shows that most women enter sex 
work due to a complex set of reasons as opposed to any one single over-riding reason. While abject 
poverty was cited as the main cause by almost three-fourths of the women interviewed, lack of 
education, financial freedom, domestic violence, family responsibility, lack of support by family 
members and harassment and abuse in society and in the workplace, were other inter-linked factors 
facilitating involvement into sex work. Some women reported that they were pushed into sex work by 
deception or force by known or unknown persons. Many women who initiate sex work are not forced 
physically, but do so because of reasons over which they had little or no control. In this sense, 
initiation into sex work is far more complicated than a simple distinction of ‘voluntary’ and ‘involuntary’ 
as explained by other studies in India and around the world