Introduction: Special section ‘female clients of commercial sex’

In this introduction to the special section ‘female clients of commercial sex’, we start by an overview of the early interest in research on male clients of commercial sex and the tendency to criminalize and pathologize them. Then, we will question and discuss the lack of interest and the difficulties of researching women clients. Subsequently, we will look at the literature investigating women paying for sex to better understand and situate the research included in this section. After that, we will examine the contributions of the articles included in this special section and finish by reflecting on the meaning of this issue for future research on sex work.

Mental Health Counselors’ Perceptions of Rural Women Clients

Researchers have frequently described rural women as invisible, yet at 28 million, they represent over half of the rural population in the United States. We conducted a transcendental phenomenological study using semi-structured interviews and artifacts to explore 12 Midwestern rural-based mental health counselors’ experiences counseling rural women through a feminist lens. Overall, we found eight themes organized under two main categories: (a) perceptions of work with rural women (e.g., counselors’ sense of purpose, a rural heritage, a lack of training for work with rural women, and the need for additional research); and (b) perceptions of rural women and mental health (e.g., challenges, resiliency, protective factors, and barriers to mental health services for rural women). We offer specific implications for counselors to address the unique mental health needs of rural women, including hearing their stories through their personal lenses and offering them opportunities for empowerment at their own pace.

The Global Ruling of Local Crisis Intervention: An Institutional Ethnography of Anti-Violence Work in Kyrgyzstan

This article analyzes contradictory practices carried out in Kyrgyzstani crisis centers for victims of gender violence resulting in women-clients failing to obtain the protection they seek. These problematic dynamics are shaped by a global apparatus on women’s human rights protection and international standards of practice. Crisis center professionals perform the final activation of this ruling apparatus through textual work driven not by the women’s needs but by the goal of bringing local actions into accord with the “legal framework” organized and expressed by the national anti-violence law and the government’s need to report on it to international treaty bodies.

Transformational sexualities: Motivations of women who pay for sexual services

Previous research on client motivations to purchase sexual services in the UK has predominantly focused on the experiences of men. Women who buy sex have largely been overlooked as it is commonly assumed that women provide, rather than purchase, sexual services. In addressing this empirical absence, this article examines data gained from 49 interviews with women clients and sex workers. It examines the reasons why women decide to purchase sexual services in the UK. We argue that the increasing importance of contemporary capitalism and consumerism has shaped women's engagement in the sex industry as clients. We show how women's sexual agency and assertiveness as clients, inverts the female sex worker/male client binary assumed to characterize commercial sex and illustrates the overlap and convergence of male and female sexuality. Our research thus contributes to an understanding of female sexuality more broadly, as exemplifying the hallmarks of ‘transformational sexualities’ in cosmopolitanism (Plummer, 2015).

Impact of Micro Finance Through Amhara Credit and Saving Institution on Women Economic Empowerment

Women economic empowerment is one of the strategies aimed at enabling women in decision making, increment in income and asset ownership. The purpose of the study was to analyze the impact of micro finance through Amhara credit and saving institution on women economic empowerment. Qualitative and quantitative research approaches were used to obtain a reliable data. Data were derived from a questionnaire of a sample of 346 women clients of Amhara Credit and Saving Institution. In addition, six focus group discussions were conducted involving 48 women while in depth interviews were carried out with 6 micro finance leaders, and experts. Multiple Regressions, Independent t-test, Analysis of variance were employed for data analysis. The Regression result revealed that age, marital status, education level, credit amount, number of training have significant impact on women’s economic empowerment. However, numbers of household and previous business experience have insignificant impact on women economic empowerment in the study areas. Independent t-test result revealed that Amhara credit and saving institution has significant impact on women’s economic empowerment as measured by the increased participation of women in resource controlling, improved household income, asset possession levels, and saving

A Review of Existing Literature on Sustainability, Mission Drift and Loan Defaults

As the abundance of research work has been done in the field of Microfinance in the last two decades. This research work deals with the issue of factors affecting operational self-sufficiency, financial self-sufficiency and loan repayment performance and the trade-off between financial performance and outreach to poor and women clients. The section one deals with prior research work on factors affecting the sustainability of MFIs. Section two reviews prior research works on Mission drift i.e. trade-off between sustainability and outreach. Finally, section three deals with the factors affecting loan repayment performance.

Sexual Objectification, Internalization, and College Women’s Depression: The Role of Shame

This study examined potential mediators, a moderator, and a moderated mediation of the link between sexual objectification experiences and depression among 489 young adult college women. Findings from the mediation analyses revealed that sexual objectification was directly and indirectly related to depression via greater body surveillance and self-blame. Shame moderated the direct effect of sexual objectification on body surveillance. Sexual objectification predicted body surveillance for women with low but not high or moderate levels of shame. Shame also moderated the direct effect of sexual objectification on self-blame and provided support for moderated mediation via conditional process analyses. Sexual objectification predicted self-blame for women with high and moderate but not low levels of shame. The findings underscore the importance of attending to experiences of objectification when working with women clients presenting with depression and to help them lessen habitual body monitoring, blaming themselves for being sexually objectified, and feelings of shame.

A Conceptual Perspective on the impact of Micro Finance on Women Empowerment

Equitable growth is a very important factor for the development of any nation. Traditionally, women in India have been not so privileged with regard to access for credit and financial services. The formal financial sector predominantly lends to the male populace and sometimes the women end up with challenges for credit. Globally, ~65% of people under poverty are women. Hence, this makes it more pertinent to provide credit to women to ensure that there is equitable growth. Microfinance achieves to bridge this gap by providing women clients with affordable credit to enable them to grow. This conceptual study is to understand the impact of Microfinance on women empowerment internationally amongst developing nations and the impact of Microfinance on women empowerment in India. This study revolves around understanding of key research done globally on important variables such as income savings on the economic empowerment and social empowerment variables such as impact of family decision making & freedom to state a few.

Proportions of Pre-Cancerous Cervical Lesions and Its Associated Factors among Women Clients in the Age Group of 30-49yrs in Gynecology Ward of Dessie Referral Hospital and FGAE, North-East Ethiopia, 2016

Introduction: Globally, cervical cancer is the second most common cancer in women; in 2008 there were an estimated 530,000 new cases and more than 270,000 women die from it [1]. In Ethiopia, cervical cancer is the second most common cancer following breast cancer and the leading cause of death from cancer. Annually, an estimated number of 4648 women develop the cancer and 3,235 die from it. Low-resource countries experience 85% of the global burden and in regions such as Eastern Africa and South-Central Asia. Low perception of risks and lack of awareness about cervical cancer screening amongst women and challenges of access to cervical cancer screening for early detection of disease have been reported amongst factors responsible for increasing incidence and mortality due to cervical cancer in developing countries [2]. Objective: The general objective of this study was to determine the proportions of cervical precancerous lesions and to assess associated factors among women clients (30-49) in Gynecology OPD of Dessie referral hospital and FGAE, 2016. Methods: An institution based cross-sectional study design involving quantitative method was employed. For the quantitative survey 422 women in the age group of 30-49 were participated. The sample size was computed by using single population proportion formula for finite population with 95% confidence level, prevalence of 50% and marginal error of 2%. Pretested and structured questionnaire was used in order to facilitate reliable response. Questionnaires for each item were adapted from previously done similar studies. Pretest was done on five percent of study population. Results: Among 422 study participants who were currently screened, 390(92.4%) were negative for cervical precancerous lesions when tested by visual inspection with acetic acid (VIA), 29(6.9%) were positive for cervical precancerous lesions and 3(0.7%) were suspicious for cancer. The majority (69.9%) of the study subjects did not ever screen for cervical cancer in their life time. Concerning the reasons for not screening, 98(33.3%) of them said that it is painful while 54(18.3%) and 37(12.5%) of them said I am health and it is expensive respectively. Conclusion: The proportion of cervical precancerous lesion was 6.9%. In multivariate regression analysis increased age(>46), high parity(>4), first intercourse at <20 years, having > two sexual partners, positive HIV status, History of Human papilloma virus (HPV) infection, History of sexually transmitted infection (STI), Smoking, History of abortion, nonuse of condom and family history of cervical cancer were significantly associated with the development of cervical precancerous lesions.