Combating Sex Trafficking

Combating Sex Trafficking:

Advancing Freedom for Women and Girls

Donna M. Hughes

Professor and Carlson Endowed Chair

Women's Studies Program, University of Rhode Island

Keynote Address

Northeast Women's Studies Association Annual Conference

University of Massachusetts Dartmouth

March 5, 2005

Activist Scholarship

I have always considered Women's Studies to be the academic arm of the Women's Liberation Movement. I have pursued my research and scholarship with the goal of advancing women's freedom and equality.

I have done work on women and science, but my most activist scholarship has been on the trafficking and sexual exploitation of women and girls. My goals have been to document the violence against women that is inherent in sex trafficking, analyze the factors that cause and contribute to this complex system of violence and exploitation, raise the consciousness of concerned citizens about sex trafficking in their neighborhoods and around the world, and engage law and policy makers to create new remedies to assist victims and hold perpetrators accountable.

I have conducted research projects on sex trafficking in Ukraine, Russia, the U.S. and South Korea, and the use of new information technologies, particularly the Internet, to traffic women and girls in Europe, Cambodia, and the United States. I have researched the involvement of mail-order-bride agencies in the trafficking of women in the countries of the former Soviet Union. And I have been involved in contemporary theoretical and policy debates on sex trafficking and prostitution.

The term "sex trafficking" replaces the term "white slave trade" used at the turn of the 20th century. When feminists in the second wave of the women's movement again took up the work against trafficking, they used the word as an umbrella concept to encompass all practices of buying and selling women and children's bodies. According to Dorchen Leidholdt, one of the early activist lawyers against commercial sexual exploitation:

"Trafficking, as we understood it, included American pornography, temple prostitution in India, military prostitution in the Philippines, street prostitution in Peru, and sex tourism from Europe to Asia."

Now, the term "trafficking" has been narrowed by legislation, a U.N. Protocol, and common usage, so that one must now say sex trafficking, prostitution, and pornography to be comprehensive.

I got involved in anti-trafficking work in the late 1980s and for ten years all the work I did was of the sort you can do with no money. I included material on trafficking in the courses I taught, participate in conferences, and wrote papers based on data that can be collected with few resources.

Researching Trafficking in a Sexist Culture and Authoritarian Political System

In 1998 and 1999, the U.S. government awarded the first grants for research on trafficking and I was a recipient of two of them. One was to research the trafficking of women and girls into the United States and the other one was to research the trafficking of women from Ukraine.

The National Institute of Justice's joint research project with Ukrainian researchers was a unique and educational experience. It was the first time that NIJ funded a joint research project with international research partners. I learned a lot about the trafficking of women from Ukraine, and I also learned a lot about conducting research in a sexist culture and authoritarian system.

In Ukraine, I found myself immersed in a culture with deeply sexist beliefs about women's nature, behavior, and motivation. Still following Soviet ideology, national interest was considered more important than individual rights. I learned how blatant corruption and authoritarianism can be.

When I questioned police, government officials, and academic experts about trafficking, the responses I got often left me wondering if I was researching the trafficking of women or the manifestations of sexism.

I was told that the reason so many women were being trafficking from Ukraine was because Ukraine had the most beautiful women in the world, so it was not surprising that they would be in so much demand for prostitution all over the world. I was reminded of the lyrics to the Beatles song "Back in the USSR:" "Well the Ukraine girls really knock me out. They leave the west behind."

Several academics and officials said that the disappearance or migration of so many beautiful women was a threat to Ukraine's gene pool - the collective DNA of the nation. They were afraid that only the ugly women were going to be left behind to breed in Ukraine.

I was told that so many women had gone abroad, with the assumption that many of them were trafficked, that villages were left without young women and children. The problem was so severe in places that elementary schools were closing for lack of young students. If the trend continued, one can see this as a demographic problem. The Ukrainians considered this to be a looming national disaster. Since I'm always thinking of solutions to problems I wondered if I was going to have to recommend that women should stay home and have babies.

A number of the male experts I spoke to believed that trafficking didn't really exist. Most believed that women went abroad voluntarily to be in prostitution and made a lot of money.

When one academic expert told me this, I pointed out to him that Ukrainian victims had been identified in the Balkans. He countered by saying that these women just claimed to be victims so that they would receive free travel expenses from NGOs to return home.

At the end of these conversations or interviews I was often left wondering whether I was studying sexism or trafficking.

In this project, I was matched with an excellent Ukrainian researcher by the name of Tatyana Denisova. She was head of the criminal law department at Zaporozhye State University and was the highest ranking woman - a colonel in the Ukrainian militia or police force. She was able to use her extensive contacts among police to get us good information and interviews. We were the only woman-only research team and we worked well together, so much so, I think we became a threat to the head Ukrainian administrator who was promoting the researchers he controlled. I got some lessons