New York University

Graduate Student, Anthropology

Ph.D. Candidate

Thesis Title: The Public Place of Private Work: Regulating Sex Work in Quito, Ecuador

About

I am currently conducting my fieldwork on sex workers in Quito's historic center. I focus on women who work on the street rather than in brothels to understand how Latin American society views the public display of women's sexuality.  I am interested in how different spaces become gendered--i.e. the private versus public spheres and how these sex workers disrupt traditional divisions that have existed in Latin America. I  examine how the Ecuadorian state regulates street sex work, as it falls in a gray area of jurisdiction at the moment. The women are supposedly allowed to publicly solicit clients but they are frequently arrested for petty crimes such as loitering. No official laws exist about street prostitution, only brothels are regulated by the state.

The police receive pressure from the neighborhood residents to remove the sex workers from the streets because these women give the area a "bad name." Further, the residents claim that it is a family neighborhood with many schools and churches--the presence of prostitutes "corrupts children" and undermines the many religious institutions. Indeed, the sex workers solicit clients on three sides of a massive convent that takes up an entire city block. Ironically, the cloistered nuns are surrounded by sex workers!

I am making a film about the sex workers called "Working Mothers."  I have never met a sex worker who is not a mother and all of them claim that they entered the industry simply to support their children. In contrast to a typical North American view of sex workers, these women are not working to support an addiction--they view it as any other job, working daily from 10am to 6pm to be home with their children at night.

Follow my blog which records all my adventures on the streets:  http://andesanthropologist.blogspot.com/

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