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Extract from The Dynamics of Sex Work
GAD Talk Bulletin, Vol3, May 2002
Zimbabwe Women's Resource Centre and Network (ZWRCN)
May 2002

What is Sex work?
Sex work (SW) has become the acceptable term for what is more commonly known as prostitution. Prostitution is usually understood to be an act that involves the sale of sex by women and girls in exchange for some sort of cash or value based-good. Male prostitution is used to explain the very same act when men and boys perform it.

Sex work is therefore a more encompassing term that includes both men and women as traders and buyers of sex. It places the process of selling and purchasing sex within an economic frame. It also takes away the widely held assumption that the sex trade only happened in heterosexual or male/female relationships and makes room for an understanding of homosexual - that is male/male or female/female sexual exchanges based on the receipt of money, material goods or other benefits.

Until recently very little work had been done on male prostitution in Africa. Most of the work had been concentrated in places like Hanoi and Asia where research showed a high prevalence of SW between men. HIV/AIDS has changed some of that. Men and how they sell sex is being factored into some of the work aimed at coming up with effective ways to deal with sex and sexuality in this time of HIV/AIDS.

Women who engage in SW are largely seen as criminals. They are considered social outcasts and labeled as being the bringers of ‘evil’ into otherwise clean communities.

In chiShona, one of the most widely spoken national languages of Zimbabwe "hure" more often than not refers to a whore – a woman who sells sex or who is of questionable sexual morals. The same inference is evident in how the siNdebele term "sfebe" is used.

 This perception of commercial sex as being something that unclean women do with men who are often invisible from the equation contributes towards the negative and lowly treatment of sex workers in our societies and a lack of commitment to addressing the root causes of Sex work – one of which is poverty, another is women’s economically low or weak status.

There is no doubt that the overwhelming majority of people who sell sex are normally involved in this trade because of poverty. For them, SW is a means of earning a living or supplementing an inadequate income. It is normal to see sex workers moving in and out of the sex work as their financial situation changes.

 The majority of women in sex work say they would prefer to have an alternative means of earning their living but do not have the skills or opportunities in the job market.

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