DECISION-MAKING, OPPORTUNITIES AND AUTONOMY OF WOMEN IN THE LAC REGION:

WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT?

 

MSc. Teresa C. Ulloa Ziáurriz[*]

 

One of the main achievements of the feminist movement during the 90s was the recognition of the sexual and reproductive rights of women as human rights.  These rights included the right to sexual and reproductive health, but also the right to pleasure and enjoy sex, the right to decide when, how, and with whom to have sex and get pregnant, the right to have access to family planning methods, including abortion, and not being infected of STDs, mainly HIV-AIDS.

At that time, we considered very important that every woman learn to negotiate, accept or deny the access to her body, to her sexuality.  And now, ten years latter things are not very different, at least in most Latin American countries.

To have the right to take part in the decision-making process over their health, their autonomy, their sexuality, their bodies, their lives for women in Latin America is not yet a tangible right.  They face discrimination, gender violence, that include domestic, sexual, psychological, economic, political and institutional violence, a violence that could even reach to death, and lack of opportunities; poverty and extreme poverty, low social status, inequity, confined to the private sphere, and envisaged as sexual objects, wives and mothers.

Is difficult for the Latin American women to talk about decision-making, autonomy, empowerment, option, choice, opportunities, in a patriarchal context, crossed by sexism, machismo, phalocentric syndrome and the masculine exercise of power in their lives and their realities.  They are along their lives subjected always to the masculine power in the public and in the private sphere; they pass under the authority and decision-making process from their fathers, to their husbands, couples, exploiters or pimps.

This reality was confirmed by a global study ordered and presented to the Davos Forum to measure the reduction of the inequity bench, where a great number of LAC countries reflected the little advance achieved in the improvement of the living conditions of women, Brazil and Mexico were graded as several Arab countries, where women have the lowest status and conditions of equity, where the lower advance in the reduction of the inequity bench have been achieved.

And in this context, what are we talking about?…  We cannot talk about free and informed sexuality, we cannot talk about sexual and reproductive rights, we cannot talk about autonomy, and above all, we cannot accept prostitution as a choice, an option, but as a marginal survival activity, a violation to human rights of women which attempt against their dignity and their physical, mental and sexual integrity, even including that prostitution is a high risk practice for infection of STDs.  Survivors of prostitution present mental and physical disorders as war syndrome, frequent suicide attempts, most of them ends their lives in poverty, without hope.  For most of them who always are chosen, and are not entitled to negotiate the access to their bodies, because the ones who negotiate are the pimps, every sexual intercourse represents a rape, and they suffer more than ten rapes every day, they never experience pleasure, and make a big effort to evade their reality.

We consider the global sexual industry as an activity of the organized crime that puts in danger all the women and girls of the developing world suffering poorness and extreme poverty.

It is not an issue dealing with smuggling, or migration, or tourism.  The trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation is a major problem which affects women and children at the global level as a consequence of underdevelopment, the lack of opportunities and social exclusion.  Trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation of women and children for sexual purposes, such as prostitution, pornography, sex tourism, servitude, sexual slavery, etc., are grave violations to the victims’ human rights and fundamental liberties, but also treats victims as commodities or consumption articles that can be sold, bought, or rented; and perpetuate patriarchal stereotypes of oppression and violence against women and children by the power of sexist men who identify the body of women and children as objects for their sexual pleasure.  These practices perpetuate the stereotype of women equal to sexual objects for men’s pleasure.

According to studies undertaken in different countries, recruitment can include abduction[PU1] , pressure from parents, arrangements between parents and traffickers who may be part of organized crime, deceit, the offer of better life and working conditions, addictions, domestic violence, sexual abuse, illegal adoption, seduction, and marriage previous to the victim’s exploitation.  Victims are oftentimes taken to work sites far from their places of origin.

Traffickers have different ways of operating.  They commonly deceive victims by offering them better life conditions in other countries or in urban centers within the same country.  Survivors often testify that traffickers retain their travel documents during transport or afterwards and, sometimes, resell them their own travel documents at exorbitant prices—a maneuver that leaves women and children in a defenseless and vulnerable position.

In some cases, victims are kept as prisoners in brothels and their confinement is reinforced with barred windows, door locks, and guards.  Exploiters also exercise control by creating situations of dependency and indebtedness of the victim.

Likewise, exploiters resort to physical aggression and violence to initiate women and children into the sex market industry, though in the case of virgin girls and teenage girls, the price for the first penetration increases considerably.

 

As in every market economy, in Mexico and in Latin America the economy is based on the law of supply and demand.  That is why we can affirm that if the demand was not on the rise, the supply would not be increasing or diversifying.  If the demand request younger girls, they bring even babies six months old, if the clients request blond girls they are brought from Eastern Europe, or Brazil, or Argentina, if they request dark skins, they are brought from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, etc., facts that causes trafficking with sexual purposes, mainly of women and children, and also is the cause of sexual commercial exploitation of children. But, in addition, in my country, like in many other Latin American countries, there are no public policies directed at abating the demand side of commercial sexual exploitation and trafficking.  Until the demand is targeted, the supply will continue and increasing.

The majority of Latin American countries punish victims who are subject to sanitarian controls and arrested for the exercise of prostitution.  A measure against the demand or customers, who are the ones that guarantee and diversify the supply, has never been implemented.  For example, to submit the clients to sanitarian controls, or shame and naming practices, or criminalizing the buying of sex, because as the demand diversifies pornography is produced with children or babies less than a year old.  That is why we need to guarantee mechanisms that ensure the social, economic, and cultural rights, and the sexual and reproductive rights of children and women, and punish the demand, including those that recruit, film, transport, house, etc. as well as those that buy or consume prostitution, pornography, sex tourism, and trafficking in women and girls, because consumption is a form of perpetrating violence against women, and perpetrators should be accountable before the law, as the rapist, a perpetrator, or a trafficker.  Therefore we propose that trafficking in persons for sexual purposes be considered a menace against collective security, and a crime against humanity, and any law or policy that recognizes prostitution as a work, should be considered a crime against humanity, systematic and generalized, just as genocide, with the consent of the State, and, therefore, the governors, policy makers, and legislators should also be accountable.

We believe that the international community will not be able to build collective security, law enforcement, democracy, peace, sustainable development, reduce poverty, if violence against women is not eradicated in our planet and the global sex industry, mainly prostitution and trafficking for sexual purposes, is not universally recognized as a form of violence against women and girls, and as the modern day slavery.

Thank you

New York, N.Y.  March, 2006.

CSW 2006.