Anjana’s working life and downward spiral began before she turned 15.
With an alcoholic father, mother and two younger sisters to support, Anjana (name changed to protect identity) started working at age 14 as a local doctor’s assistant in the northern Tamil Nadu town of Dharmapuri. Later, as a housemaid at a lawyer’s house, she was sexually exploited by her employer who put her in touch with pimps and made her trade sex for money. Anajana narrated her story to Sri Bhavani, a consultant with Swasti Health Resource Centre, a Bengaluru-based nonprofit.
By 17, Anjana—then a slim, quiet teenager–was a sex worker. During the course of her life, she has frequently been physically abused by clients, husband and partner, forced to have sex and today lives with HIV-AIDS, as does her husband. She now earns Rs 15,000 per month, but even this–as we shall see–is unlikely to make her life more peaceful.
Like Anjana, a fifth of female sex workers live with violence, attacked four times a month, on average, according to an analysis of data on 109,366 such workers, gathered over six months to September 2015 by Swasti as part of its work under the Avahan initiative (Phase 3).
Those with more clients and income were more likely to be attacked, the data reveal, which in turn placed them at greater risk of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV-AIDS. This could be because they were less likely to get tested.
As many as 24,815 women, or 22.7%, reported 92,838 bouts of sexual, emotional and physical violence against them in the six-month period of the survey, carried out in five states: Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.
The most prevalent form of violence is physical with 39,832 incidents reported, followed by emotional (35,887) and sexual violence (17,119).
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Feature image courtesy indiatoday.intoday.in
