Greater Women Initiative for Health and Rights (GWIHR), a non-governmental sex workers-led organisation in Nigeria with a unique perspective on the issues confronting sex workers, has called for improved participatory level and involvement of sex workers in community-led policy-making and access to digital skills and technologies that would positively impact their livelihood.
GWIHR made the call in a statement titled, ‘International Women’s Day 2023: DigitALL: Innovation and Technology for Gender Equality’, where it described IWD as a remarkable day to acknowledge and celebrate women’s achievements and also highlight gaps in inclusion and raise awareness of gender equality.
According to the Executive Director, Josephine Aseme who signed the release, GWIHR used the day to celebrate “all women, including those who are sex workers and trans women, especially those championing the advancement of transformative technology and digital education.”
“We seize the opportunity of this day to highlight some digital inequality gaps that exist in the lives of women who are sex workers in calling families, state actors, policymakers, and the society at large to action and see the need to broaden the women’s rights movement to include female sex workers and trans women who do not have all of the advantages and protect sex workers’ data in digital spaces to ensure their safety and security on digital platforms,” she added.
She stated that it was clear that societal non-acceptance of choice of job and gender identity fuels discriminatory practices and exclusion of sex workers in social systems hence the need to improve the participatory level and involvement of sex workers in community-led policy-making and gaining access to digital skills and technologies that will positively impact their livelihoods.
