COVID-19 and Commercial Sex Work: Practice, Challenges, and Coping Mechanisms of Commercial Sex Workers in Menehariya Sub-city of Hawassa City, Ethiopia

Abstract

The COVID-19 crisis has left everyone scared and many bereaved. It has hit the most vulnerable the hardest. The central focus of the paper is to explore the lived experiences of commercial sex workers in the age of the COVID-19 pandemic in Menehariya Sub-city, Hawassa. A qualitative approach and a phenomenology design were employed to explore extensive data and uncover the hidden experiences of commercial sex workers from their perspective. A snowball sampling technique was employed to select the study participants and 11 participants were involved in this study. A semi-structured interview guide was used to collect data and the collected data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Findings indicated that commercial sex workers find it difficult to practice some of the COVID-19 protective measures (i.e., social distancing measures and wearing facemasks) during sex work. The major challenges experienced by commercial sex workers are social, economic, health-related, psychological, and security/safety challenges. Personal characteristics, economic, social pressure, weak legal system, religious beliefs, protective measures nature, and customer rejection are the challenges explored to apply the COVID-19 precautions. The coping strategies employed are cost minimization, sharing money with colleagues, spending time with families and friends, religious activity, contacting regular customers, returning to relatives in the countryside, engaging in small business, and reunion with the ex-partner. Using alternative stuff and sex position are strategies used to cope with COVID 19 protective challenges. Based on the findings, the social work interventions that promote social justice and social change are indispensable, and social work practitioners should consider the vulnerability of commercial sex workers in their practice settings. Consistently, all the concerned bodies need to include the issues of commercial sex workers in the COVID-19 response efforts.