Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere- a qualitative thesis about the organization Empower and their sex working women in Thailand.

Abstract

This thesis examines the organization Empower and their members, who consist of sex working women in Thailand. The purpose is to explore the more liberal point of view of prostitution and how the female members perceive Empower. Furthermore the study investigates if the organization can improve the sex workers empowerment. The study also delineates how these women reflect on their professional role as a sex working woman and whether the women relate to feminine discourses. The study is implemented in Chiang Mai, Thailand during the fall of the year 2010 and is based on qualitative methods like interview, focus group, observations and text analysis. The empiric material is interpreted from theoretical perspectives such as empowerment, queer theory and postcolonial theory. The thesis show how female sex workers in Empower collectively fight for their rights to avoid being labeled as victims. By the basic ideologies of Empower and the women’s abilities to work on their own conditions this can perceive as a statement to increase their empowerment. The study also exemplifies the difficulties with considering sex work as a professional occupation when hierarchy of values and normativity limit the freedom of action. The fact that Thailand is a country where sex tourism is palpable while sex work is illegal leads to a complex situation for the Thai women who sell sex. All of the women who participated in the study had economic reasons as their primary incentives for entering the sex industry. The conclusions of the composition is that the women are striving to increase a professional status as sex workers which in turn can indicate a struggle for normalization- and professionalization. The women in the study don’t want to be identified as victims. Instead they want to see themselves as a part of the women´s liberation movement, who strives for sex workers rights in the Thai society.