Argentina: poor women forced into prostitution

Off Our Backs, Jul/Aug 2004 by Christian, Sena, Stachowski, Roxanne, Ferden, Sara, Walter, Shoshana

South America

As unemployment rates for women living in Latin America and the Caribbean continue to rise, many women are moving to Argentina to search for work. But because the Argentinean economy plummeted in 2001 and the unemployment rate has jumped to nearly 25 percent, many women who came to Argentina in the 1990s to find work have been forced to work as prostitutes.

Although prostitution is illegal in Buenos Aires, the law is rarely enforced and women are able to make more money in the sex industry than in any other line of work.

An increase in global economic instability, with global unemployment reaching 6.2 percent, has created an environment where women have few alternatives to prostitution in order to survive.

-info from www.washingtonpost.com

news compiled by Sena Christian, Roxanne Stachowski, Sara Ferden, and Shoshana Walter