The Role of Collective Action on Family Well-Being

While social work has played a role in political collective action, there is little research that

examines the role of collective action on individual and family well-being. Recent research

documents that collective action, such as participation in collective advocacy for a common

cause, is associated with positive health outcomes in communities that have been marginalized.

Sex worker mothers are one such community that have been marginalized but also have been

part of collective action to fight against the oppressive ideologies and systems.

Mainstream society and media have superficially depicted sex worker mothers as victims who

lack agency, make poor parenting choices, and are inadequate mothers due to their profession,

and such derogatory representations have further marginalized and stigmatized them and their

families. Children of sex workers often inhabit this same risk environment of their mothers and

confront a number of challenges that shame their health outcomes, such as initiation of sex at

young ages, high levels of stigma, and conditions marked by poverty and violence.

As such, sex workers have mobilized to legitimate their work to improve the health and well-

being of their children. This collective identity and action have been powerful in increasing

condom use as well as enhanced well-being within the sex worker community.

While there has been a plethora of research on sex workers’ sexual practices and moralistic

debates about the profession, little efforts have been made in social work to understand the role

of collective action on sex workers mothers’ ideologies about parenting strategies related to

health.

Academic investigators partnered with Durbar, a collective of 65,000 sex workers in Kolkata,

India in a community-based participatory research project. Durbar has been instrumental in the

sex workers’ rights movement by developing and implementing a community-led structural

intervention, ultimately reducing risk and transmission of HIV/AIDS. In partnership with

Durbar, participants were recruited through snowball sampling and individual interviews were

conducted with 35 sex worker mothers who received services from Durbar. Elements of

Grounded Theory were utilized and sampling was stopped when theoretical saturation was

reached.

We found that engagement in Durbar’s political collective action shaped sex worker mothers’

ideology and cognition about sex work and sexual health. Firstly, Durbar’s peer education

training and engagement provided sex workers with the sexual health knowledge, collective

empowerment setting, and additional source of income that ultimately provided them with the

self-efficacy to discuss sexual health with their children. Secondly, Durbar created consciousness

through establishing a sex workers rights-based ideology casting sex work as legitimate work

through political advocacy-based initiatives that shaped sex workers’ decision to discuss sex

work with their children. Thirdly, Durbar empowered ownership over one’s body and sexual

health through education and advocacy initiatives. Findings were then used to develop a family-

based sexual health communication intervention for sex worker mothers that were rooted in

collectivity.

Examining the collective action processes leads us to better understand the association between

macro processes and micro outcomes. Such examination is essential to operationalize the role of

political social work with individuals and families.