Aboriginal Women In Western Canada

Aboriginal women in Western Canada have been faced with challenges and adversity in many aspects of their everyday lives. It is important to identify and analyze some of the reasons why there are a high proportion of Aboriginal women involved in the sex trade in Western Canada. This analysis is to further demonstrate the state and society’s implications and effects on the lives of these women, and how they have shaped the world that sex trade workers in Canada are forced to live in day in and day out. Society and the legal system in Canada have hindered the liberation of Aboriginal prostitutes historically, as well as presently through the effects of colonization, subordination of violence, and an immense proportion of poverty. Events regarding
Early 20th Century Vancouver was home to 40 female-run brothels , and police were concerned with eliminating street prostitution . This signified a control and toleration of sex work. Following the 1940’s, society viewed prostitutes as disease spreaders, causing sex workers to be removed from brothels, forced off the streets, fined, charged as criminals, and occasionally jailed . The closure of brothels continued rapidly in to the 1980’s . The perspective shift from society regarding prostitution caused a large shift in the momentum of prostitution. Women were forced on to the streets, with no place to go; their livelihoods were removed from them, and they were not only open public harassment, but to preying men and sexual predators due to the fact they were forced to take their previously safe work to the streets. According to today’s society, because one does not fit into a specific career class, they are not worthy of basic human rights. It is a completely inaccurate presumption that most people believe that prostitutes choose these lives, and so it is not their concern to attempt to help these
Native women involved in the sex trade in Western Canada are faced with many difficulties, including: violence, rape, assault, lack of food, homelessness, AIDS, death, and drug addiction. These women did not choose this way of life. However, an intricate web of predispositions - violence, poverty, and lack of security- have lead Aboriginal women to the sex trade as an attempt to survive. It is an unfortunate series of events when a country is able to provide financial and residential security for new comers to the nation, but completely ignores and blames the first peoples of the land for their circumstances. Society also judges and implicates on prostitutes, causing many people believe that women chose this life, and it is a completely consensual arrangement. The legal system also persecutes these women; they are murdered, beaten, assaulted, and go missing without the slightest inquiry as to their disappearances or abuses by police. Sex trade workers are judged and denied basic human rights on the basis of their gender, culture, race, and job positions. Recently, there has been a push to legalize prostitution in Canadian cities nationwide. Where this would be a good institution, as these prostitutes would be guaranteed rights, and