Sex tourism and women’s rights in Thailand

Hi everyone! Today our presentation topic is sex tourism and women’s rights in Thailand. Generally people assume that as Thailand has got lots of beautiful beaches and mountains and best sceneries that’s why lot of tourist go there but its not the whole truth as behind the scene to a great extent something different is going on and that is sex tourism. It is one of the significant parts of tourism industry in Thailand. So we will be going to look at it in details.

Although we will be focusing on sex tourism, forced prostitution, trafficking of women, poverty, illiteracy and the countries economic policies are all closely related subjects. What is sex tourism, it global and local scale will be looked at and the political views will be explored so that how this kind of tourism is violating women’s rights can be understood. Thailand will be our local cases study as it has undeniably an international reputation as a sex tourist destination. However, before we look into sex tourism, it should be made clear that we are looking at how sex tourism violates women rights. So we will regard these women in Thailand of ages from 13 plus, as this is the age that Thailand regards females as women.

Sex tourism is tourism, partially or fully for the purpose of having sex, often with prostitutes. And sometimes, the whole idea which underlies this growing industry might be, by traveling abroad, one can do anything with foreigners that they cannot do at home.

Sex tourism comes in two forms: either tourist go on their own arrangement or through Sex tour companies, who organize trips for their customers to another country for the primary purpose of engaging in prostitution. This is the most popular – and is done through promotional materials of sex tour companies like their websites, brochures, videos and the "entertainment" events they organize, ably demonstrate how sex tour companies contribute to the exploitation and objectification of women and women's bodies by promoting prostitution and pornography.


Now we are going to look at how spread sex tourism is globally and locally .
Sex tourism is not just happening in Thailand but is happening on a global scale. With an estimated $1 billion per year business worldwide, Sex tours originate mainly from Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United States, among others, and go to developing countries including the Philippines, Thailand, Mexico and the Dominican Republic.
Being integrated into the economy and society, this form of sex industry has been said to bring an approximately 450 million Baht annually which is equivalent to 11million us dollar.

So why Thailand is so popular with this kind of industry, out of all developing countries? To find the answer we need to look at origins of this industry in Thai history.
Prostitution has become an industry in Thailand with the major help of the United States military and the World Bank and the Thai governments’ policies.


US involvement in the 1960s

During the Vietnam War in the 1960s, the US department of defense had a contract with the Thai government to provide ‘recreation and relaxation’ for the U.S. soldiers. With the finance being provided from the U.S. officials, the local Thai prostitution organized and expanded into a major industry.

By the time the war ended in 1976, sex-industry establishments had expanded across the county and tourism was promoted in order to gain foreign exchange. Thailand was advertised to male foreign tourists as a place where they could indulge in sexual services, while at the same time it remained common for Thai men to visit brothels. Thus commercial sex became a huge business in Thailand, and quickly evolved into a well- organized industry supported by powerful entities.

World Bank
In 1975, the World Bank built an economic plan for Thailand around the sex tourism industry, which helped turn sex tourism into the country's number one export. As a result, Prostitution has now become such an important industry, that work to end prostitution must also support the growth of new industries. The World Bank is loaning $1.9 billion US dollars to Thailand for projects. Its history of supporting sex tourism in Thailand makes it unlikely that current policy critically considers the effects of sex tourism on women. In fact, the current World Bank pages on Thailand do not even mention the sex tourism industry or prostitution.

Violation of women’s rights:

Forced prostitution, trafficking, illiteracy, poverty, unemployment, etc. are integral part of violation of women’s rights. That’s why we are going to look at it in brief. Sometimes women or young girls are forced to become prostitutes due to poverty, debt bondages, unemployment etc. Sometimes they are kidnapped by traffickers and forced to end up in a brothel or place like that. Due to poverty, some families in rural areas of Thailand, in particular northern part of it,, sale their girls to the pimps to get some money.

Women are regarded as national resource in sex tourism due to the fact that these women play a very significant role in the tourism industry which including group sex tours, is Thailand’s largest single source of foreign exchange. Ultimately, young Thai country women are just another kind of crop. Sex tourism is like multinational industry, as its extracting enormous profit from underpaid local labor like theses girls. That’s why what happens to the body of a 15 year old from a village of Thailand doesnt create any concern.

Involvement of the government in the industry: From the soldiers to the politicians, the tourism bureau officials to the police forces, every sector of government have a vested interest in the continuation of the prostitution. Many of them invest in the business and make lot of profits. That’s why there occur some incidents where police help abusers to get hold of escaping girls.

Barriers in accessing education opportunities
In the case of rural Thai women the access to education has been severely limited, due to the fact that Thailand has maintained a tradition of making educational opportunity highly competitive and has a elitist approach to higher education. Evidence of this trend can be found in illiteracy rates after half a century of compulsory education, 6.3% for men and 17 % for women.

Now we are going to look at twisted policies:
In Thailand, the official position on prostitution is that ‘prostitution does not exist because it is illegal’. On the other hand, by law massage parlors, restaurants, motels and tea houses may well offer sexual as well as other services, but they do not count as brothels. Under the cat (the prostitution suppression act in 1960 prostitutes and pimps are subject to penalties but customers are not. Penalties are relatively right, three months in prison or a maximum fine of 1000 baht.

The entertainment places act of 1966 further legitimized prostitution indirectly. This act was designed to control the operations of places of entertainment. Women are expected to provide ‘special service’ which are open to customer’s request. Thus the operators of the sex industry are protected by an unclear definition of special services. But what happen to the women in this business is it creates an unequal relationship with the authority, I mean employers and workers, because the worker in this matter the women are open to legal sanctions but the employer are free to operate. This law normalizes the traditional subordination of women and commodification of their sexuality.

Violation of women’s rights:
Objectification of women:
The idea that Thailand has become one of the world’s biggest sex industries has meant that men are visiting Thailand just for cheap sex, regardless of whom with.
Men are using women as services, Women and girls are at their command
The women of the sex industry in Thailand are advertised to male foreigners as object in which one's sexual desires can be indulged ‘however you like’
The whole idea that underlies travelling abroad for sex is that one can do anything with foreigners that they cannot do at home (Seabrook,1996). Thai women are being exploited under the assumption that they are powerless objects that men can use for their own pleasurable It seems that to most tourist men, Thai prostitutes are the perfect women, they have no answers, no questions, no future, no right.

Health issues: Thai women are affected by various physical and mental problems. They are facing with increased risk of HIV/AIDS then ever before as this industry is booming with tourists and local Thai people. AIDS has been the biggest killer in Thailand. Risk of sexually transmitted diseases is also increasing in alarming rate.

AIDS is being a epidemic in Thailand and it is assumed that most of the aids virus is spread through the sex workers especially women.
The epidemic in Thailand: most HIV infections were occurring through commercial sex
Women (15 - 49): 220,000 (up to 2001)
Estimated number of AIDS deaths in 2001: 55,000
More than 50 Thai women forced into prostitution in Japan die every year there from AIDS (November 2003)
In addition with that, mentally they are facing gross human rights violation. We have used one quote from a prostitute to demonstrate how this work in sex tourism is affecting them.

Now some proposed solutions:
The abolitionist view: Some argues that prostitution should be totally banned to stop violation again women. However, these repressive measures against prostitution are not helpful to women: these merely disperse the industry and will drive it underground.
Thai government should try to change its twisted policies in regard to sex tourism, as we have seen that it’s constantly violating women’s basic rights. The corrupted police official, government bureaucrats who are involved in this industry should be punished.
Empowering women in prostitution: perhaps the most effective way to reduce sex tourism would be to make Thai prostitutes more professional, more like their counterparts in the West, so that they can perform their job more mechanistically. They should also become more expensive. Them it will stop. Men will stop coming if they find the sex workers here have the same attitude as those in their own countries and charge the same high prices. This is only highly paid job available to Thai women. Its not all Thai women works in sex industry however, as there is good money into it some Thai women, especially poor one feel that they don’t have any other choice but to join this industry.
N.B I personally don’t agree with the last one however, I mentioned it to include one of the popular argument put forward by some human rights activists.