Prostitution in Nepal - Reasons For Entering The Sex Industry

Reasons For Entering The Sex Industry

For many, entering into the sex industry is the only way in which they could survive economically in Nepal. However, sex work is not officially recognized among the industrial or service sectors of labor. There is a large case of sex trafficking in Nepal, but voluntary sex work is more common than many believe.

Among the developing poor nations throughout Southeast Asia today, Nepal remains one of the most poverty-stricken. Research shows that about 38% of the Nepali population is living under US$1 per day, and 82% under US$2 per day. Due to this high rate of poverty, the rural poor Nepalese people generally have large families, are landless or have very small landholdings, have high rates of illiteracy and are concentrated in specific ethnic, caste and minority groups. These many issues of poverty contribute to the reasons that men, women, and transgenders go into the sex industry in Nepal. Due to their large families, these sex workers need to find a way to help out within the household. More specifically, there are not many opportunities for the women sex workers, and women in general to break out of the domestic environment and duties which have left them in poverty, so the only option left for them is going into sex work.

Nepal, like many other Southeast Asian countries, has a limited amount of resources for women. Recently, the Nepalese government has recognized more rights for women in terms of family involvement, physical integrity, ownership rights, and overall civil liberties. However, this does not change the fact that women are still highly underrepresented in Nepalese society, and do not have the same rights that men do.

Women constitute a majority of these sex workers, because they rarely have any opportunities otherwise. These women may feel empowered by the work that they do, in the sense that they can better provide for their families, and be seen for something other than what society treats women. In some cases, girls that are put into the sex industry are forced to migrate to carpet factories outside of Nepal or in more centralized cities by their families to better provide for them. After a while, they are either abducted into the traffic scene, or coerced to join. The issue of poverty has driven many families in Nepal to desperation, to the point of putting their daughters out on the streets to earn money to help out in the home.

Human trafficking in Nepal—more specifically, sex trafficking—is a common precursor to voluntary sex work. After escaping from the sex trafficking world, women return to sex work when they return to Nepal, for it is the only thing they know.