Empower is a Thai sex worker organization that promotes opportunities and rights for sex workers. From Empower’s beginning in 1985 until about 1997 many of Empower’s leaders and members were women in situations of debt bondage, living and working behind locked doors with no freedom of movement, and unpaid. However, by 1999 these horrendous conditions were almost entirely a thing of the past. Locked brothels, debt bondage, and force had all but vanished. A detailed explanation of why things changed is not possible here, but three major reasons for the dramatic changes are that migrant women could travel more independently, they were no longer limited to living and working in a brothel, and they found ways to organize together.1
The word trafficking, whether in Thai or English, was never used by women to describe their situation. It is a foreign word in every sense. Sex workers in Thailand...
