Abstract
Drawing upon research in rural coastal Andhra Pradesh, this article analyzes sex workers’ negotiations of family and social life with their work in a highly stigmatized profession. Such women routinely described the double bind presented by their work, which simultaneously provides these relatively low status individuals with a sense of personal worth while exposing them to severe violence and stigma. Findings presented here accordingly document the processes by which sex workers collude with members of their social networks to purposefully foreground their actions as “good” woman and to underplay or even hide their sex work.
Recommended Citation
George, Annie
(2010)
"Negotiating contradictory expectations: Stories from ‘secret’ sex workers in Andhra Pradesh,"
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies: Vol. 8:
Iss.
1, Article 12.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.cortland.edu/wagadu/vol8/iss1/12