Research Information System
SEXUALITY RESEARCH AND SOCIAL POLICY, vol.1, no.1, pp.1-18, 2025 (SSCI, Scopus)
Introduction
This study was conducted to investigate the multilayered forms of oppression that cisgender female sex workers living in Turkey are subjected to from a feminist and anti-oppression social work perspective.
Methods
In-depth interviews with twenty-five sex workers were analyzed using the thematic analysis method based on interviews conducted between 2022 and 2023, and a map of oppression was created in which client-based oppressions were structured under the following six themes: Client Power and Capitalist Control, Negotiating Survival under Threat, Condom Refusal as Coercion, Substance Use under Client Pressure, Performing Beauty under Patriarchal Expectations, Internalized Stigma and Identity Fragmentation.
Results
The findings revealed that violence that sex workers were subjected to included not only the physical dimension but also economic, social and cultural dimensions.
Conclusions
To survive in the face of these multifaceted oppressions, sex workers redefine consent, and sometimes try to sustain their lives by submitting to violence.
Policy Implications
In the study, a transformative framework for rights-based social policies and practices by making visible not only individual acts of violence but also the structural inequalities that make this violence possible is provided. Among the fundamental steps of this framework are decriminalizing sex work, criminalizing client-related violence, and ensuring sex workers’ access to social services.