Indonesian sex workers organise

[Lilith7]

Good for this woman - given that there will almost certainly be a need for sex workers, this is a good move since the less its hidden, the more likely medical help will be accessed when needed.


https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/4...igma-shame

• [b]"Medan, Indonesia –[/b] Marta Dewi, a housewife in Central Java province, became an advocate for Indonesia’s sex workers by accident.

Dewi lives in Bandungan, a small mountain town known for drawing thousands of sex workers from all over Indonesia. Living side-by-side with the women trying to make a living, Dewi empathised with their situation.

• “I’ve never worked as a sex worker but I care about my environment and, in my area, there are so many sex workers,” Dewi told Al Jazeera. “Once I got to know them, I realised that they did these jobs out of necessity and shouldn’t be judged.”

In 2015, Dewi founded PERKAWIS, or the Association of Tourist Workers, a union to support sex workers in the region and educate them about health, financial issues and the law. The name was chosen in consideration of the stigma associated with sex work and to sound palatable to religious groups in the region.

Dewi decided to set up PERKAWIS after a sex worker died of an overdose and was discovered in a boarding house close to Bandungan with only a fake identity card on them.

“It was so difficult for us because we couldn’t find their family,” Dewi recalled. “There were a number of other cases too, where a sex worker died and we had no data about them. Now we compile the data of the workers who come here so that we know who to contact if there is a problem.”

• PERKAWIS also works with the local health authority to provide sex workers with health checks and educate them about their reproductive health as many of the women have not been taught basic sex education. The union has handed out free condoms in the past and provided workers with screenings for HIV and other STIs.

Activists say the tendency of sex workers to move away from family and friends only adds to the need for groups like PERKAWIS that can offer support.

Dewi said PERKAWIS does not have a set number of members as the turnover of sex workers in the area is high, but that she typically has about 100 sex workers in her database at any given time.

“I just do as much as I can do, within the conditions that I have to work with,” she said. “I just try to care about the people around me.”