Mama Cash\u2019s support to sex workers has been central from the early days as an international women\u2019s fund. In 1985, soon after the establishment of the fund, the first International Whores\u2019 Congress<\/a> which took place in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, was financially supported by Mama Cash Throughout the years, the importance of supporting sex workers has been discussed regularly by board and staff of Mama Cash but was never fundamentally questioned. Sometimes questions come from outside; from individuals and organisations inquiring how it is possible for Mama Cash to identify as a women\u2019s rights promoter without responding to women and girls being trafficked into the sex industry and to act as if sex work was a profession like any other. Mama Cash\u2019s answer to this is that a feminist perspective allows for two things: firstly for seeing sex work and trafficking as separate issues, and secondly for forming viewpoints on these two that are supportive of those directly involved, such as sex workers and women trafficked into a variety of exploitative situations.<\/p>\n The right to voluntarily engage in sex work and the right to refuse forced sex work are both valid and in a just world these two co-exist. It is feminism, with its scrutinising eye for power relations that offers the possibility for this \u201cboth\/and\u201d perspective. We can support both<\/em> sex worker activism and<\/em> the fight against trafficking. We can pursue both <\/em>an increase in sex workers\u2019 power and agency and<\/em> the dismantling of power of those who force women and others into sex work. Curtailing the rights of sex workers in order to prevent trafficking is an \u201ceither\/or\u201d approach that does not do justice to those who choose sex work as their profession, and it is thus not Mama Cash\u2019s pathway. Mama Cash values both<\/em> anti-trafficking efforts and <\/em>sex workers\u2019 agenda-setting, and can financially support self-led groups working in these domains.<\/p>\n So why are sex workers\u2019 rights a priority for Mama Cash? The reason is fairly simple: we see sex work as work. We are committed to fund women, girls and trans* people claiming their labour rights and their freedom of choice, and consequently we fund sex worker activism. Sex workers\u2019 voices need to be heard and their place at the decision tables to be secured. If sex workers get a say in legal and practical aspects of sex work, the stigma surrounding it can be reduced. This is an important step towards realizing Mama Cash\u2019s vision that every woman, girl and trans* person in the world will have the power and resources to make her own choices, have control over her body, and participate fully and equally in creating a peaceful, just and sustainable world.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sex work remains a highly contested issue. In most places in the world, societies and laws impose horrendous stigma and abuses on sex workers. But even within human rights movements there are disputes about whether sex work should be seen as labour or as exploitation…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":173,"featured_media":14895,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,604,8],"tags":[654,34,25,499],"class_list":{"0":"post-8678","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-categories","8":"category-sex-work-and-sexuality","9":"category-voices","10":"tag-mama-cash","11":"tag-sex-work","12":"tag-sexualities","13":"tag-women"},"menu_order":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/173"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8678"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14899,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8678\/revisions\/14899"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/1-1-300x120.png\")
. One of the ideas behind the congress was that sex workers\u2019 rights are critical for the rights of all women: because of the gender norms in society any woman can be stigmatised as a \u2018whore\u2019, so freedom for women is only possible if sex workers enjoy their rights and freedom. In the 1990s and the 2000s several of the sex worker groups supported by Mama Cash added a labour rights lens to their analysis and advocated for sex work to be treated as work. Examples of groups that received funding in this period are AMMAR<\/a> from Argentina and WONETHA<\/a> from Uganda. Besides providing direct support to sex worker groups and networks, Mama Cash, together with other social justice funders and sex worker networks, promoted the foundation of the Red Umbrella Fund<\/a> in 2012, the first global fund guided for and by sex workers.<\/p>\n