Beyond Individual Coping: Daily Living Conditions Which Negatively Shape the Wellbeing of Women Engaged in Sex Work in Barbados

Abstract

Investigations of the mental health of women engaged in sex work in the Global South hardly explore how daily living conditions created by unjust social and systemic structures might be giving rise to distress that is beyond alleviation when only individual coping strategies are used. Consequently, we collaborated with a local community-based organization to conduct a phenomenological grounded theory study of the wellbeing needs of 30 Black women engaged in sex work in Barbados. In this paper, we report on the impoverished and gendered violent daily living conditions, exacerbated by stigma, which manifested as emotional distress for these women. We illustrate how these living conditions, grounded in colonial legacies, neocolonialism and neoliberalism, are beyond the control of the women. We provide recommendations for developing policies and programs in Barbados toward improving these living conditions and ultimately relieving the women’s distress. We suggest key areas for future research with women engaged in sex work in Barbados and similar contexts in the Global South.

Keywords:

• Global South
• resilience
• sex work
• mental health
• Black Caribbean

Acknowledgements

We wish to acknowledge our community partner, Jabez House, and the women who courageously volunteered to share their stories. Thank you for your willingness to undertake this journey with us.

Declarations

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Notes

1 The term Global North refers to those whose ancestors used the wealth gained from colonizing others to develop their countries into rich, industrialized, democratic societies (Chilisa 2012; Dirlik 2007).

2 The term Global South is used to refer to indigenous peoples of South America, North America, New Zealand, Australia, South Asia and Africa; and descendants of Africans who were enslaved and transplanted to places like the Caribbean, the U.S, Canada and the U.K, referred to as the African diaspora) (Chilisa 2012; Dirlik 2007).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sadie K. Goddard-Durant

Sadie Goddard-Durant is an Adjunct Professor at Brock University. Sadie holds a PhD in Applied Social Psychology from the University of Guelph. Her research-practice focuses on three areas: examining how Black Caribbean women as members of the Global South successfully deal with the intersecting, colonialist structural and systemic injustices which characterize their daily lives; designing and conducting research which attends to the ways in which Black Caribbean women live culturally and the historical and current social, political, and economic context in which their daily lives unfold; and developing programs and policies reflecting the daily lived experiences of Black Caribbean women.

Stavroula Kyriakakis

Stavroula Kyriakakis’s area of research is gender-based violence and the study of how women exercise agency in creating conditions of safety and wellbeing. Dr. Kyriakakis has experience conducting qualitative research across cultural, national and linguistic boundaries with communities at high risk for exposure to violence, as well as social and legal retribution. Her research tends to be with immigrant and refugee communities in the US, or in parts of the world where there is a stigma associated with seeking counseling and other mental health services. Dr. Kyriakakis’ prior study examined the process of help seeking among Mexican immigrant women affected by intimate partner violence, and her current study examines the social service needs of women engaged in transactional sex work in the Caribbean.