This paper examines human trafficking through a feminist theoretical lens, arguing that gender-based economic and social inequalities make women and girls disproportionately vulnerable to traffickers. Drawing on reports from the American Psychological Association and peer-reviewed literature, the paper explores why up to 80% of trafficking victims are female, how gendered forms of labor (sex trade, domestic servitude, sweatshop work) complicate detection, and why victims often cannot seek help even when opportunities arise. The paper also critically evaluates the limits of the feminist framework, acknowledging male victims, the role of racism, globalization, and immigration enforcement as additional factors that shape the phenomenon of human trafficking.
It is estimated that the majority of individuals who are illegally trafficked are female. This includes not simply workers in the sex industry, but employees in many other areas in which trafficking commonly occurs, including domestic service and recruitment for sweatshop labor. Although the full extent of human trafficking is difficult to estimate, most studies conservatively indicate that up to 80% of all persons who are trafficked are female (Loring, 2007, p. 1).
The predominantly female population of trafficking victims has caused many analysts to adopt a feminist theoretical framework to analyze the phenomenon. A recent report on human trafficking advanced by the American Psychological Association from a feminist paradigm pointed out that, given that "economic and social inequalities are among the leading contributing factors to human trafficking," women are often the most vulnerable groups to exploitation by traffickers (Report on trafficking of women and girls, 2011, APA).
Women tend to earn less money than men and have less access to high-paying employment. They are often unable to resist pressures imposed upon them by male parental or other authority figures, and they have few means of resisting circumstances that compel desperate actions — circumstances shaped by lack of education and family obligations to siblings, their own children, or elderly relatives.
Feminism helps to illuminate not only why women are predominantly the victims of trafficking, but also why they may feel helpless to resist their enslavement even when given the opportunity to escape. It is a paradigm that stresses the gendered nature of social and economic inequalities. It also suggests that the solution to preventing trafficking is not merely better policing, though that is one component of ending the crime. Women must have equal access to education and economic opportunities in their home countries to resist the familial and social pressures that render them vulnerable to the human slave trade.
The feminist framework also illuminates how a trafficked worker's psychological state can make it extremely difficult to reveal her plight without outside assistance, given how women's physical vulnerabilities, fears, low self-esteem, and even threats of harm to loved ones can be used to compel compliance. Furthermore, it supports the notion that even technically "non-coerced" entry into the sex trade carries a coercive dimension based on the context in which it occurs. As one analysis notes, "Foreign women may agree to enter another country as entertainers, but then find themselves functionally helpless in a country with a culture far different from their own, where they are subject to economic pressures and race and gender oppression that may drive them without overt coercion into the sex trade" (Loring, 2007, p. 2).
This is not to deny that males can also be exploited by traffickers. "Traffickers, at the same time, take advantage of the gendered perceptions of 'female skills': They may target women and girls for prostitution or as brides, while men and boys are more often exploited as farm laborers or trafficked for adoption," although women can also be co-opted into agricultural work (Report on trafficking of women and girls, 2011, APA). However, the types of labor into which women are most often conscripted — the sex trade, sweatshop labor, and domestic servitude — are frequently the least visible forms of enslaved employment, which makes it far more difficult for law enforcement to detect their imprisonment.
Women can also be more vulnerable to psychological manipulation in the rare instances when they do have contact with outsiders while enslaved. It is estimated that 28% of trafficked women saw a healthcare professional while still in captivity and went undetected (Dovydaitis, 2011, p. 462). This statistic underscores the critical role that healthcare providers could play in identifying and assisting victims if they were better trained to recognize the signs of trafficking.
"Critique of feminist framework's blind spots"
"Race and globalization as additional trafficking drivers"
Dovydaitis, Tiffany. (2011). Human trafficking: The role of the health care provider. Journal of Midwifery & Women's Health, 55(5), 462–467.
Loring Jones, David W. Engstrom, Tricia Hilliard, & Mariel Diaz. (2007). Globalization and human trafficking. Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare. Retrieved from FindArticles.com: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0CYZ/is_2_34/ai_n27265537/
Report on trafficking of women and girls. (2011). American Psychological Association. Retrieved from
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