Biofuels Driving Women To Trade Sex For Food
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Rising food prices around the world are driving poor women to trade sex for food, U.N officials said on Monday.
Delegates at a major AIDS conference in Mexico cited the cases of fisherwomen in the Pacific and women in Kenya desperate for food being forced to sell their bodies, adding to concerns of a new twist in the spread of the deadly pandemic.
“Food is such a basic need that you can see people really going to great lengths,” said Fadzai Mukonoweshuro of the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization in southern Africa.
Climbing food prices — due primarily to increased use of biofuels, caused 50 million more people to go hungry last year compared to the year before, the United Nations said. The growing demand for grains to feed a booming Asia, droughts and market speculation have also contributed to the price hikes.
“This leads to various distress responses, one of which on the part of women is having transactional sex to feed their kids,” Stuart Gillespie of the International Food Policy Research Institute said.
“Recent studies in Botswana, Swaziland, Malawi, Zambia and Tanzania have shown associations between acute food insecurity and unprotected transactional sex among poor women,” he said.
Overfishing of tuna in the Pacific has forced Papua New Guinea fisherwomen to abandon their smaller craft and join the crew of larger boats, where they trade sex for food scraps, the officials and delegates said.
Such “fish for sex” deals are also common in Kenya on the shores of Lake Victoria, where women fish traders meet incoming boats and sleep with fishermen for a favorable price.
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Looks like it might be time to head to Mexico with my canned goods.
August 4th, 2008 at 11:44 pmWomen have always traded sex for food. In college we called that a “date”. duh.
August 5th, 2008 at 12:15 am“Women have always traded sex for food.”
yeah, because they know how to find it
August 5th, 2008 at 1:26 amI think that the whole point is that the Liberals are fucking over the poor people that they say they’re looking out for. The best bart is that it’s the UN that said that liberal trends are baically the reason behind this. Although knowing the UN they’ll say we should spend more money and raise taxes to feed people who without previous liberal interfearance would be able to eat.
August 5th, 2008 at 3:45 amLike this is something new. Back in the ’70’s gas crisis, high inflation, high unemployment, in Florida, there were women prostituting just to feed their kids. After the crisis was over they quit and went back to their normal lives.
August 5th, 2008 at 7:02 amWhy aren’t men doing the same thing during this food crisis? What do they end up doing instead? Any ideas?
September 2nd, 2008 at 12:53 am