They said the move, announced at a national convention in Calcutta, has become necessary following the closure of dance bars in Maharashtra.
Campaigners say that legal recognition is crucial for the future of the children of sex workers.
The National Network of Sex Workers says that it will organise a protest march to the Indian parliament.
Imagine a similar march on Congress — with our pols trying to keep from being recognized as clients!
Two decades ago, Smarjit Jana, now chief adviser to the National Network of Sex Workers, organised Calcutta’s prostitutes into the powerful union, the DMSC (literally Powerful Women Co-ordination Committee).
The DMSC forces clients to use condoms and runs a co-operative for the women in the city’s red light districts.
Now, sex workers from all over Asia visit Calcutta to learn from the DMSC about how to organise themselves to demand legal rights and protection, how to practise safe sex by making condom use mandatory and how to keep away all those who try to take away their hard earned incomes.
I honestly believe this is where we’re all going.
The oldest profession on Earth is not going to go away and it’s about time we realized it and put protections in place for those who practice it. There is no reason we should marginalize and jail this huge group of women. It is not realistic, and it’s not useful. Laws clean up the circumstances under which these activities take place.
I honestly believe making this type of work less seedy would help everyone.
We’re outsourcing Hos now?
Reminds me of the COYOTE group on the US West Coast – Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics. (Or was it: Cast Off Your Old Tired Ethics).
Nope, “Call Off” it is…
http://www.bayswan.org/COYOTE.html
Personally I’d like to see the protests. A bunch of prostitutes marching and chanting “HELL NO, WE WON’T BLOW”
Shucks – Just as I was thinking about entering the profession
If the Indian Hos are as good as their outsourced software – you would have to wake them up afterward.
How do they make condoms mandatory? They want to put ‘workers’ in jail if they don’t require condoms?
Perhaps when they marched on the capital, they should have just put them all in jail.