TY - JOUR
T1 - Co-occurring Threats to Agency Among Female Sex Workers in Baltimore, Maryland
AU - Nestadt, Danielle F.
AU - Tomko, Catherine
AU - Schneider, Kristin E.
AU - Kerrigan, Deanna
AU - Decker, Michele R.
AU - Sherman, Susan G.
N1 - Funding Information:
Women were categorized as being BIPOC if they reported being any race/ethnicity other than only White (Hispanic or non-Hispanic), comprising many different racial and ethnic groups. Because of the small number of participants who identified as a race/ethnicity other than White only or Black only (N = 28; 7%), Black, indigenous, and other women of color were combined in analyses to improve statistical power: This work was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse under Grant R01DA041243; National Institute of Mental Health under Grant F31MH118817; and Johns Hopkins University Center for AIDS Research, a National Institutes of Health-funded program under Grant P30AI094189.
Funding Information:
The author(s) declared the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse under Grant R01DA041243; National Institute of Mental Health under Grant F31MH118817; and Johns Hopkins University Center for AIDS Research, a National Institutes of Health-funded program under Grant P30AI094189.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 SAGE Publications.
PY - 2022/6
Y1 - 2022/6
N2 - Driven largely by the unequal distribution of power, female sex workers (FSW) globally bear a disproportionately high burden of HIV, sexually transmitted infections, and interpersonal violence. Prior literature has identified a number of multi-level factors that may serve to constrain FSWs’ agency, or their ability to define and take action to realize goals. Among these are work-based violence and substance use, which are potentiated by the criminalization of sex work and structural vulnerability. Quantitative research related to U.S.-based FSWs’ own sense of agency, as well as the barriers that may impede it, is sparse. We sought to identify patterns of various threats to agency and explore to what extent they were associated with perceived agency among a cohort of 381 FSW in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, using latent class analysis. Latent class indictors were past-six-month experience of client-perpetrated sexual violence, client-perpetrated physical violence, homelessness, food insecurity, arrest, daily crack-cocaine use, and daily heroin use. Perceived agency was measured using the short form of the Pearlin Mastery Scale. We identified three typologies of threatened agency among women in our sample: a “threatened by structural factors, drug use, and violence” class, a “threatened by structural factors and drug use” class, and a “less threatened” class. Mean perceived agency score was significantly lower for the class characterized by client-perpetrated violence than for either of the other classes. This suggests violence, in the context of deeper, structural power imbalances embedded in hunger, homelessness, and drug use, may dramatically reduce one’s sense of agency and operate as a critical barrier to empowerment. Our study adds important insights to the broader FSW community empowerment literature and supports the need for interventions to bolster both individual and collective agency among U.S.-based FSW, including interventions to prevent sex work-related violence.
AB - Driven largely by the unequal distribution of power, female sex workers (FSW) globally bear a disproportionately high burden of HIV, sexually transmitted infections, and interpersonal violence. Prior literature has identified a number of multi-level factors that may serve to constrain FSWs’ agency, or their ability to define and take action to realize goals. Among these are work-based violence and substance use, which are potentiated by the criminalization of sex work and structural vulnerability. Quantitative research related to U.S.-based FSWs’ own sense of agency, as well as the barriers that may impede it, is sparse. We sought to identify patterns of various threats to agency and explore to what extent they were associated with perceived agency among a cohort of 381 FSW in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, using latent class analysis. Latent class indictors were past-six-month experience of client-perpetrated sexual violence, client-perpetrated physical violence, homelessness, food insecurity, arrest, daily crack-cocaine use, and daily heroin use. Perceived agency was measured using the short form of the Pearlin Mastery Scale. We identified three typologies of threatened agency among women in our sample: a “threatened by structural factors, drug use, and violence” class, a “threatened by structural factors and drug use” class, and a “less threatened” class. Mean perceived agency score was significantly lower for the class characterized by client-perpetrated violence than for either of the other classes. This suggests violence, in the context of deeper, structural power imbalances embedded in hunger, homelessness, and drug use, may dramatically reduce one’s sense of agency and operate as a critical barrier to empowerment. Our study adds important insights to the broader FSW community empowerment literature and supports the need for interventions to bolster both individual and collective agency among U.S.-based FSW, including interventions to prevent sex work-related violence.
KW - United States
KW - agency
KW - drug use
KW - empowerment
KW - female sex workers
KW - structural vulnerability
KW - violence
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U2 - 10.1177/0886260520978188
DO - 10.1177/0886260520978188
M3 - Article
C2 - 33300442
AN - SCOPUS:85097387862
SN - 0886-2605
VL - 37
SP - NP8818-NP8843
JO - Journal of Interpersonal Violence
JF - Journal of Interpersonal Violence
IS - 11-12
ER -