The documentary Born into Brothels was the inspiration for this paper. After viewing this film, a portrayal of children who live in a red light district in Calcutta and whose mothers are prostitutes, I sought to explore prostitution from an economic perspective. The research for this paper is library driven with a focus on the body as a commodity and sex as a market. Initially, it was difficult to find scholarly literature that did not grasp sexual commerce through the narrow focus of victimization. Once one source was identified, I was able to use the bibliography to locate other sources.

Background

Calcutta, India is often associated with poverty. Historically, Calcutta has absorbed migrants and refugees from its neighboring states, as well as from Nepal and Bangladesh (Sleightholme & Sinha, 1996). Migration continues to increase as Calcutta becomes a major hub in the information technology industry due to multinational corporations such as IBM that relocate their offices in the quest for cheap labor. Sex workers in Calcutta, like the majority of the country’s women, are victims of a patriarchal society. This system of male dominance grants men control over all aspects of female life, including labor and sexuality. A majority of these women are from lower castes and are illiterate. While some migrate freely to the city, others are lured by corrupt middlemen into formal trafficking networks with promises of employment or marriage (Sleightholme & Sinha, 1996). Others flee from violent homes or migrate due to abandonment by their husbands or boyfriends. The employment opportunities for these women are scarce due to their lack of education and/or skilled training. The Indian government does not have a regulated system of public welfare. Consequently, these women are faced with no other alternatives for survival and turn to prostitution to meet the basic physiological needs of food and shelter for themselves and their families (Pardasani, 2005).

Of the estimated 28,000 women in Calcutta who earn their living as sex workers, 6,000 of them call one of the 371 brothels in Songachi home (Irvine, 1997). Sex workers practice in a variety of settings in Songachi. Some rent a room from a brothel owner and prostitute independent from a pimp. Others live in a brothel and work directly for the brothel owner, who has purchased them illegally. These women are then forced to work in the trade until their owner has recovered their cost of purchase. Women who cannot afford to rent a room use the streets, back alleys or customers’ cars to carry out their work (Drugger, 1999). Male migrant workers, season workers, truck drivers and tourists are the primary customers of sex workers. One shocking and depressing aspect of prostitution in Calcutta is the involvement of police, politicians, border patrollers and other authority figures. Government officials often receive monetary bribes to record false information about brothel owners and sex workers. Law enforcement officials and officers frequently threaten brothel owners and sex workers with arrest in exchange for sexual favors. These corrupt officials also receive regular payments from brothel owners to prevent raids (Sleightholme & Sinha, 1996).

Marxist Analysis

In an area where there are few opportunities for a woman’s independent economic survival, prostitution can be viewed as a marketplace.  According to Marx, a commodity is any good or service for sale in a market that possesses three types of value: use value, exchange value and price. In the practice of prostitution, the body becomes a commodity that is bought and sold, ultimately turning a woman into capital. The sex worker’s body has use value because it satisfies the monetary needs of the producer (prostitute) and the sexual desires of others. The body has exchange value, as the sex worker can exchange her body for other commodities. The amount of money a sex worker charges a client varies according to her desirability, virginity, light skin and exotic Asian features. As a sex worker’s commodity sales increase, her exchange value increases, causing her body to yield a profit and augment her capital, as well as the capital of her pimp.

Central to Marx’s theory of the capitalist economic system is alienation.  Marx asserted that private property and movable capital (money) alienate the worker from the product that they create in distinct ways. Firstly, the worker is alienated from the product of the worker’s labor, then from the process of production itself, then from their own human potential, and lastly, the worker becomes alienated from others.  When this paradigm is applied to prostitution, the body of the sex worker becomes an object that exists independent of the individual. While the prostitute’s body is used to create profits for the brothel owner or herself (capitalists), it also enslaves her because it is the only commodity she can produce. Their work is not an exercise of enjoyment, but is performed as a means to satisfy other needs, such as rent payments and healthcare. As sex workers are reduced to machines that must engage in sex for survival, most of their human relations consist of exchange relationships, alienating the workers from other people.

Woven throughout Marx’s analysis of capitalism and alienation is the theme of exploitation. Marx claims that the capitalistic mode of production, by its very nature, generates the exploited worker and the exploiting capitalist. According to Marx, the institution of private property allows the privileged to reap the benefits of others’ labor without demanding that consumers contribute. Marx refers to the process of taking away the means of production from the workers and concentrating it in the hands of a few as capital as “primitive accumulation.” According to Marx, the capitalists continually exploit the producers, who further benefit from capital accumulation. Central to Marx’s notion of exploitation is the idea of “false consciousness.” In Marxist theory, false consciousness is the failure to recognize the instruments of one’s oppression. The dominant group (capitalists) employs an ideology that misleads the subordinate group (workers) to adopt the views of the dominant group, further preventing an uprising or revolution that challenges the current state of affairs.

When economic and employment opportunities are limited, as in Songachi, sex workers are limited in their ability to resist exploitation. Within the sex industry, this violation occurs on different levels. Most noticeably, the extreme poverty of Calcutta makes young girls and women easy targets for exploitation. When the word “exploit” is used synonymously with “use,” the body becomes exploited as labor power that a sex worker is able to sell in the market. Sometimes a brothel owner or pimp abuses the business relationship and continually mistreats a prostitute and uses her for his personal benefit. Often, this form of economic exploitation is expressed when the brothel owner or pimp does not adequately compensate the prostitute for her labor. The willingness of the Indian government to tolerate, and in some cases participate in the sex trade, further exploits the women of the Songachi district. Moreover, to label these women as victims of a false consciousness is problematic. Marxist theory of false consciousness implies that individuals are not rational. Throughout this paper, one can see that many of the Songachi sex workers enter the trade for their personal survival and that of their family. For many women, even those lured into the trade by the promise of employment or marriage, prostitution becomes a logical means of wage labor due to the economic responsibilities that are thrust on their shoulders. 

Arguments about prostitution are grounded in the discourse on slavery. While the trafficking of women for the purpose of prostitution can be viewed as the ultimate expression of male dominance, it is critical that we also examine them as serving functional roles in an economically distressed area like Calcutta.  It is a myth that women of the Songachi district do not take on financial responsibilities. Raised in a culture where women are dependant upon their fathers in youth, husbands in marriage, and sons in old age, women whose marriages fail or who never marry must support themselves (Sleightholme & Sinha, 1996).

Those who flee from incest, child marriages, and physical and sexual abuse, must find means to support themselves as they seek safety. For these women, their bodies become a source of income that supplies them and their families with food and shelter. While economic factors place these women in a vulnerable position, those who freely enter the sex trade cannot be viewed as victims of modern day slavery. The commercial transactions that occur between sex worker and client are not ones of slave and slave owner, as the client is only such for a limited time. Within the transaction, consent is often negotiated, though there are times when the negotiations are violated. The sex worker is not unconditionally available to the client and the client does not ultimately decide the manner of exchange.

Prostitution can be viewed as a form of slavery when an individual’s ability to negotiate is constrained by another person. When another person has the ability to decide which and how many clients she will service, what services will be performed, and her consent is overridden in any way, she can then be viewed as a victim of slavery. Trafficked women and young girls in Calcutta and other areas should be viewed as slaves. Often, these women are held in debt bondage for years at a time, raped, subjected to torture and exposed to AIDS for the sake of profit. With the brothel owner as the only person aware of the terms of the debt and as a constant surveyor of the sex worker’s actions, escape for these women is almost impossible, constituting a state of imprisonment (Human Rights Watch, 1995). 

The women of Songachi represent a marginalized and stigmatized group in Indian society. These women are victims of poverty, abuse, and exploitation, and are powerless to implement change in their lives. One’s typical impulse is to perceive prostitutes as helpless victims in need of rescue, but this causes one to disregard sex work as an occupation and a lucrative industry. In Songachi, sex is an economic sector that generates jobs and income. The legalization of prostitution in this area could further stimulate economic growth while simultaneously improving the lives of prostitutes. Permit sales and taxation of brothel owners could stimulate the area’s economy and improve living standards. The recognition of prostitution as a profession would eliminate the need for a black market (trafficking) and the resulting corruption. In Calcutta, opening a bank account, applying for a ration card and seeking admission to schools requires a father’s name (Sleightholme & Sinha, 1996). Most parents want their children to attend a private school to remove and protect them from the sex trade. Since prostitution is stigmatized, these boarding schools hesitate to accept children of prostitutes. For those few children of sex workers that are admitted, most drop out because they are treated poorly and taunted by other students. These children become trapped in the same lifestyles as their mothers, using their flesh for income (Briski, 2004). The legalization of prostitution would remove the stigma of not being able to identity a father, legislate for protections, and grant sex workers and their children more social and economic opportunities. Most importantly, legalization of prostitution would reveal the multifaceted image of the third world prostitute; she would no longer be viewed as a volunteer or a victim, but as a human.  

Third world prostitution is often described as sexual slavery, as violence against women, or as the ultimate expression of female oppression. There is hesitation to move away from viewing sex workers exclusively as victims and to explore the topic of third world prostitution as an expression of female agency. The hardships that the women of Songachi face mark them as survivors. Through Marxist theory, we can understand prostitution as a form of labor that is exploited, rather than a form of modern day slavery. By reconceptualizing prostitution, we can move away from the oversimplified dichotomies and understand it as the outcome of social, cultural, political, and economic influences and grant sex workers dignity.

References

Briski, Zana (Director). (2004)  Born Into Brothels: Calcutta’s Red Light Kids (DVD). Think            Film Company, Inc.

Diener-Biswas, & Diener, Ed. (2001).  Making the best of a bad situation. Social Indicators    Research 55. (3).

Dugger, CW. (1999, January 4).  Sex workers in India tackle HIV and abuse. New York Times.  

Human Rights Watch. (1995).  Rape for profit: Trafficking of Nepali girls and women to India’s brothels. New York: Human Rights Watch.

Irvine, A. (1997).  Calcutta’s sex workers unite under the cooperative banner. Co-op Dialogue (7), 3-7.          

McIntosh, Ian. (1997) Classical sociological theory: A reader New York: McGraw Hill.

Pardasani, Manoj. (2005).  HIV Prevention and sex workers: An international lesson in             empowerment. International Journal of Social Welfare (14 ). 16-126.

Sharpe, Karen (1998). Red light, blue light: Prostitutes, punters and the police. Vermont:           Athenaeum Press.

Sleightholme, C., & Sinha, I. Guilty without trial: Women in the sex trade in Calcutta. New         Jersey: Rutgers University Press.

Ashley is currently a junior at UC Davis pursuing a major in Sociology and a minor in Socio-Cultural Anthropology.  She focuses on globalization in marginalized regions of the world, particularly Asia, and has completed research projects ranging from the effects of multilateral institutions on the political economy to prostitution. Desiring a future in law, Ashley currently holds a political internship where she is gaining knowledge of the challenges facing Californians, especially in regards to education, the environment, and the present healthcare crisis.

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