Sex Work In A HIV Prevalent World The anthropological article, Childhood Sexual Abuse and HIV Risk Among Crack-Using Commercial Sex Workers in San Salvador, El Salvador, offers a qualitative and in-depth analysis into the lives of sex workers in the metropolitan area of San Salvador. The purpose of this paper will be to examine the collected data from the article and apply previously discussed anthropological tactics to better understand the given information. The article underscores childhood sexual abuse (CSA) and its connection to adopting prostitution as an occupation, although, through the studied sample group no clear connection could be drawn. It is obvious that, though CSA seems to have contributed to stigmatization and negative feelings that could have led a women to seeking sex work, poverty seems to be a greater determinant of whether a woman became involved in sex work or not. The article comprises of several sections, introducing the issue of what factors may cause initiation to sex work, drug use, and vulnerability to HIV in San Salvador. The basic argument of the article is to establish a relationship between childhood sexual abuse (CSA) and increase in HIV risk. Ethnographic interviews of 40 women who were sex workers, crack users, or both were conducted in Spanish. The theoretical framework of the study suggested that girls who ran away at a young age did not actively choose to participate in deviant lifestyles but, rather, they were vulnerable to sex work and drug use because of their lack of social and economic resources (Dickson-Gomez, Bodnar, Gueverra, Rodriguez, Gaborit 550). The article also proposed that the social stigmatization contributed to self-degradation in women who experienced CSA because gender norms placed high value on virginity and discouraged sexuality in girls (550).
The severity of sexual abuse among the women was