7 - Connecting Global and Local

Summary

Chapter 7 interrogates the intersection between the global and local when considering options available for an exit from sex work and looks specifically at the role of the state, the NGO sector and grass-roots sex worker activism to show women’s limited space for agency in this process. This chapter explores how gender operates in this context of the negotiated duality of the African state to show that despite the Kenyan state’s efforts to avoid engaging with gender issues more profoundly and a continuous exclusion of women from the remit of the state, it must open some political space for movements with a gender agenda because of its accountability to donors that are driven by liberal ideas of inclusion. The first and the third parts of this chapter illustrate this process t+G11hrough examining sex workers’ narratives regarding the Kenyan state and politics, as well as analysing the politics of the sex worker movement. The second part of the chapter focuses on the engagement with the international sphere, which has important re-gendering or gender-strategic consequences. The limits of the NGO sector to address gendered inequalities and create viable alternatives for people selling sex are interrogated by analysing programmes targeting individuals selling sex.