THE GENDERED PROLETARIAT: Sex Work, Workers' Movement, and Agency

摘要

The Gendered Proletariat is an in-depth and rigorous examination of the economic basis of sex work. The author, Swati Ghosh, adeptly draws on economic and deconstructionist frameworks to explore how we may consider sex work as a legitimate domain of labour. At the core of the analyses, as the title suggest, is the issue of gendered labour, and how that aligns with the larger picture of labour, which is supposedly gender neutral. Those of us who are familiar with the literature on sex work/prostitution, are keenly aware that the field-unlike any other-is steeply immersed in the debates around sex work as a form of labour, and prostitution as the paradigmatic example of patriarchal violence. Ghosh revisits this debate not to dwell on it but rather to point us to a very important gap in the literature, that is, what constitutes "work" has remained under-theorized. This approach is invaluable to examine sex work beyond the framework of the debate because it clearly does not capture the topic in all its nuances or as Ghosh puts it, "what is required is addressing the complexities of 'work' in sex work" (xxi). The book is structured in three parts: "Sex Work and Value"; "From Prostitution to Sex Worker: An Incomplete Revolution"; and "On the Question of Agency."