Prostitution equals women's empowerment?

A Guardian blog says a group of sex workers are 'inspiring examples'

Shabana, a member of the Vamp collective of sex workers in India. She proudly
boasts that had she been married she would have had HIV.
Photo by Stephanie Hardt.

So making a living off sex is an example of female empowerment? That's what a post on the Guardian's POVERTYMATTERBLOG says. The blog is sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The post was written by Andrea Cornwall, a political anthropologist at the University of Sussex in Brighton, U.K. who serves as the director of an organization that focuses on the "development" of women. Cornwall profiles a group of sex workers in India who were proud of their line of work:

When the multi-country research program that I direct, Pathways of Women's Empowerment, began its search for inspiring examples of empowerment, in 2006, few might have imagined it would take us to a collective of sex workers in a town in the heart of Maharashtra in India.

But the stories of empowerment I heard when I visited the Sangli headquarters of the Vamp collective not only summed up some of the most important lessons we were learning in the program about what works to support women's empowerment, they were also among the most impressive.

Read more here.