Combating Sex Trafficking

Combating Sex Trafficking:

Advancing Freedom for Women and Girls

Donna M. Hughes

Professor and Carlson Endowed Chair

Women’s Studies Program, University of Rhode Island

Keynote Address

Northeast Women’s Studies Association Annual Conference

University of Massachusetts Dartmouth

March 5, 2005

Activist Scholarship

I have always considered Women’s Studies to be the academic arm of the Women’s Liberation Movement. I have pursued my research and scholarship with the goal of advancing women’s freedom and equality.

I have done work on women and science, but my most activist scholarship has been on the trafficking and sexual exploitation of women and girls. My goals have been to document the violence against women that is inherent in sex trafficking, analyze the factors that cause and contribute to this complex system of violence and exploitation, raise the consciousness of concerned citizens about sex trafficking in their neighborhoods and around the world, and engage law and policy makers to create new remedies to assist victims and hold perpetrators accountable.

I have conducted research projects on sex trafficking in Ukraine, Russia, the U.S. and South Korea, and the use of new information technologies, particularly the Internet, to traffic women and girls in Europe, Cambodia, and the United States. I have researched the involvement of mail-order-bride agencies in the trafficking of women in the countries of the former Soviet Union. And I have been involved in contemporary theoretical and policy debates on sex trafficking and prostitution.

The term “sex trafficking” replaces the term “white slave trade” used at the turn of the 20th century. When feminists in the second wave of the women’s movement again took up the work against trafficking, they used the word as an umbrella concept to encompass all practices of buying and selling women and children’s bodies. According to Dorchen Leidholdt, one of the early activist lawyers against commercial sexual exploitation:

“Trafficking, as we understood it, included American pornography, temple prostitution in India, military prostitution in the Philippines, street prostitution in Peru, and sex tourism from Europe to Asia.”

Now, the term “trafficking” has been narrowed by legislation, a U.N. Protocol, and common usage, so that one must now say sex trafficking, prostitution, and pornography to be comprehensive.

I got involved in anti-trafficking work in the late 1980s and for ten years all the work I did was of the sort you can do with no money. I included material on trafficking in