PHOTOGRAPHY: ARIF ALI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES, PA PHOTOS
3
MILLION WOMEN
AND GIRLS ARE SLAVES
IN THE SEX TRADE
Slavery is something we assume is
consigned to the history books. But
sadly this isn’t so. In fact more women
are forced into brothels each year in
the 21st century than African slaves
were shipped into slave plantations in
the entire 18th century.
Worryingly, sex slavery of girls
and women is
seen by many as
inevitable in
cultures where
men might not
marry until their
late 20s but cannot have girlfriends
for religious or cultural reasons.
Half The Sky found that this is
common opinion in some areas of
Nepal, where author WuDunn met
eight-year-old brothel worker Meena
Hasina. Meena was threatened with
swords and forced to have sex with
10 or more customers a day. None of
the men used a condom. The attitude
WuDunn came across was: where else
Gender-targeted violence is an
issue that affects women all over
the world. Twenty-one per cent of
Ghanian women report that their
sexual initiation was by rape, 17%
of Nigerian women have endured
rape by the age of 19 and in South
Africa, 21% are raped before they
reach 15. During civil war in
Liberia, 90% of girls over the age
of three were sexually abused.
And in Britain, one in 10 women
will experience rape.
When researching her book
WuDunn met Woineshet in
a rural area of Ethiopia, where
kidnapping and raping girls is
a time-honoured tradition. There,
if a man likes a girl, but cannot
afford the ‘bride price’, rape is
a tool. It effectively ruins her
marriage prospects, so she has
can men fulfil their urges than in
brothels filled with illiterate, rural girls?
“These girls are kidnapped, brought
to a brothel, forced to work and not
fed enough because they don’t want
them to get fat. A slave in the 18th
century was worth $40,000 in today’s
money. Now you can buy a trafficked
girl for a few
hundred
dollars.”
And this is
also happening
on our front
doorstep. Right now, in city centres
and quiet suburbs across the UK,
an estimated 18,000 women
(including some as young as 14) are
sex slaves. The Poppy Project (an
outreach programme which provides
accommodation for trafficked women)
found that these girls and women come
from eastern Europe, southeast
Asia and west Africa and are forced
to work in brothels across Britain.
“AN ESTIMATED 18,000
WOMEN (SOME AS YOUNG
AS 14) ARE WORKING AS SEX
SLAVES IN THE UK”
WOMEN AGED 15-44 ARE
MORE LIKELY TO BE KILLED
BY MEN THAN CANCER,
MALARIA, CAR CRASHES
AND WAR COMBINED
to marry him. In some countries,
rape is even a sanctioned form
of punishment. In 2002, Mukhtar
Mai, a rural Pakistani woman from
a remote part of the Punjab, was
gang-raped by order of her tribal
council for her younger brother’s
alleged relationship with a woman
from another clan. “They know
that a woman humiliated in that
way has no other recourse except
suicide,” says Mukhtar. “They don’t
need weapons. Rape kills her.”
RAPE VICTIM MUKHTAR
MAI (RIGHT IN GREEN) CAMPAIGNS
AGAINST THE IGNORANCE
SURROUNDING FEMALE ABUSE
Gendercide is responsible for the
loss of around 100 million females
and is a worldwide problem. At a
feeding station in Ethiopia nearly
everyone desperate for food was
female. WuDunn spoke to Ummi,
a 13-year-old girl and her mother
to find out why. The mother told
130
MILLION
WOMEN
WORLDWIDE
HAVE HAD
THEIR
GENITALS
MUTILATED
2. Sign up for email updates
on womensenews.org and worldpulse.
com. Both advise on practical action
you can take.
3. Join CARE Action network
at care.org which educates
Every 10 seconds, a girl somewhere
is pinned down, her legs pulled
apart, and a local woman with no
training uses a knife to slice off
some or all of her genitals. In most
cases there is no anaesthetic.
The reason? To minimise a
woman’s sexual pleasure and make
her less promiscuous. In Sudan,
Ethiopia and Somalia the entire
genital area is ‘cleaned up’, snipping
away the clitoris and labia and
leaving a raw wound. Sewn up,
leaving just a small opening for
menstrual blood, her future
husband then ‘reopens’ her to have
intercourse. Laws have been passed
in 15 African countries but little has
changed. Ninety-nine per cent
of Guinean women have been cut
yet no case has ever come to trial.
HOW TO STOP THE VIOLENCE
Each of us can help stop the abuse of women across the globe. “It doesn’t
have to exist,” says WuDunn. “We can have a significant impact.” Here are
four simple but effective steps you can take in the next 10 minutes:
1. Sponsor a girl or woman
through Plan International (planinternational.org),
Women For
Women (womenforwomen.org) or
World Vision (worldvision.org.uk).
WORLD ABUSES
100 MILLION FEMALES HAVE
BEEN ALLOWED TO DIE
THOUSANDS OF FEMALES IN
ETHIOPIA ARE STARVING AS
ANY FOOD IS GIVEN TO MALES
FIRST WHEN SCARCE
WuDunn it was because any food
a family has will go to the males.
In China, where boys are prized,
the invention of ultrasound has
had a chilling effect. In the Fujian
Province, one man excitedly told
WuDunn, “We don’t have
daughters anymore!”.
In two cities in Pakistan, 5,000
women have been set alight or
seared with acid in the last nine
years. In Britain, honour-based
violence against Muslim women
accounts for the murders of 12
women every year (sources
believe this is only the tip of the
iceberg), often prompted by
women adopting too much of
society’s ‘western culture’.
governments about poverty. It will
assist you in speaking out and passing
on information to policymakers.
4. Go to globalgiving.org or kiva.org.
Both sites link you to people in need,
GlobalGiving lets you choose a
grassroots project; Kiva arranges
micro-lending to entrepreneurs.
For more information and the ongoing
project go to halftheskymovement.org
WWW.STYLIST.CO.UK 41
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