The Vulnerable Women: Law and Violence in Russian Female Sex Workers’ Lives
An article co-authored by Michele Decker, Sarah Peitzmeier (a former student affiliated with the center), Chris Beyrer, and Andrea Wirtz was recently published in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence; their study focused on the unique challenges faced by female sex workers (FSW) in navigating their occupation in the midst of being vulnerable to violence from multiple fronts. Historically, female sex workers have been casted out to the lowest rung of social hierarchies — from Les Miserables’Fantineto The Handmaids’ Tales’Moira, female sex workers have continuously been characterized as “fallen women,” not only in literature but also in pop culture and in other mainstream modes of thought. As such, they face the ever-present stigmatization that surrounds their occupation, all while being exposed to potential violence from their clients, police officers, their pimps, and their intimate partners. The article explains the concept of polyvictimization — female sex workers are vulnerable to different sources of violence. In order to better understand the challenges faced by female sex workers, the research team surveyed 754 female sex workers from Russia and assessed lifetime experiences of client, police, intimate partner, and pimp violence.
They found that 45 percent of these women experienced any type of violence, with the largest bulk of the violence experienced from clients. Furthermore, they found that client violence was “central to polyvictimization…” as only a small percentage occurred without client violence. What they proposed was that client violence may drive exposure to other types of violence — for example, a client could himself inflict harm on female sex workers, report the sex worker to a police officer (who then can inflict violence on the FSW), or influence the female sex worker’s pimp to inflict harm on her as well.
Female sex workers face a myriad of barriers — both structurally and legally. Russian law enforcement officers either have an illegal arrangement with the pimps to ignore physical assaults on female sex workers or the officers arrest and jail FSW to extort large fines for their release. Additionally, the current Russian administration has constantly expounded upon conservative, “traditional” values as their social platform in conjunction with the Russian clergy — so, female sex workers are further cast aside from gaining the full protection of laws, anti-violence initiatives, and social programming services.
To address this complex issue, the paper recommended that more assessments should be conducted on violence inflicted on female sex workers to find and analyze patterns of violence co-occurrences across settings. Using these future findings, the article proposes that intervention programs tailored to the needs of female sex workers in particular regions is best suited to decrease the occurrence of violence.
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