In Asia, the history of sex workers’ organisations is a story of resistance, community power, and the quiet courage of people who have long lived at the margins of legality and social acceptance. Across South, East, and Southeast Asia, sex workers have slowly built networks and unions that fight for labour rights, decriminalisation, dignity, safety, and health. Today, keywords like sex workers’ rights, decriminalisation in Asia, and HIV prevention activism sit alongside older cultural concepts such as ijjat (Hindi for “honour”) or 面子 (miànzi, Mandarin for “face”), revealing how deeply stigma is woven into social expectations—and how hard-won every step of progress has been.
The origins of organised sex worker movements in Asia trace back to the late 20th century. In India, sex workers in Kolkata’s Sonagachi district began organising in the early 1990s, laying the foundations for what would become the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC), now representing more than 65,000 workers. Their approach—community-led health programmes, peer educators, legal literacy—became a model across the region. From these beginnings, the idea spread: if communities could organise around swabhiman (self-respect), they could challenge both predatory policing and harmful anti-trafficking policies that often conflated consensual adult sex work with coercion.
In Thailand, groups like EMPOWER began mobilising in the 1980s, rejecting the moralising gaze that often painted sex workers either as victims or criminals. They insisted instead on sangkhom thi kao jai (Thai for “a society that understands”), advocating for labour protections and the recognition of sex work as work. Their Patpong centre became both school and sanctuary: a place where dancers could study English, health rights, and legal procedures between shifts. In Cambodia, Women’s Network for Unity (WNU) emerged after the 2008 anti-trafficking law triggered a wave of police raids that pushed sex workers into greater insecurity. WNU fought back, framing the issue as one of survival and economic justice in a country where garment wages often fall short of feeding a family.
East Asia followed its own trajectory. In Hong Kong, Zi Teng began its work in the mid-1990s by offering outreach and legal support for migrant and local sex workers facing criminalisation and police entrapment. Japan saw the creation of SWASH, focusing on research and public education to counter the entrenched cultural silence around sex, shame, and labour exploitation. In Taiwan, COSWAS pushed for decriminalisation and better working conditions, arguing that moral frameworks anchored in 貞節 (zhēnjié, chastity) had little place in shaping modern labour laws.
Across Asia, the regional movement solidified with the creation of the Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers (APNSW), headquartered in Bangkok. APNSW became the connective tissue between national groups, providing training, policy research, and a political platform. It helped unify struggles that often seemed local but shared common threads: police violence, discriminatory laws, mandatory rehabilitation detention centres, extortion, lack of social protection, and the appropriation of “anti-trafficking” language to justify crackdowns. Many sex workers’ organisations describe their most persistent opponent not as the state or religious conservatism, but as the deeply ingrained fear of “losing face,” which often forces both families and governments to deny the existence of the sex industry at all.
Today, Asian sex worker organisations focus on several urgent priorities. Decriminalisation remains the central demand across the region, along with protection from police harassment, access to healthcare without stigma, labour rights, and recognition of sex workers’ voices in d “Nothing about us without us.” From Nepal’s Jagriti Mahila Maha Sangh to Indonesia’s OPSI, from Myanmar’s AMA to the Philippine Sex Workers Collective, the movement continues to widen, drawing strength from cross-border solidarity.
Among the most active and structured organisations in the region are the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (India), All India Network of Sex Workers (India), National Network of Sex Workers (India), EMPOWER (Thailand), SWING (Thailand), Women’s Network for Unity (Cambodia), OPSI (Indonesia), Zi Teng (Hong Kong), COSWAS (Taiwan), and APNSW (regional). These groups navigate the contradictions of societies where sex work is widespread yet rarely acknowledged, regulated yet unprotected, tolerated yet morally condemned.
The history of sex worker organising in Asia is still being written. It unfolds in alleyways, community centres, karaoke bars, and migrant dormitories—where workers gather, speak, and plan, insisting quietly but firmly that their lives matter, their labour matters, and that 尊嚴 (zūnyán, dignity) is non-negotiable.
Sex worker sisters—and brothers and all living beautifully in between—Auntie sees you. Not in the voyeuristic way the world so often stares at you, but in the way one human recognises another who has survived storms that would flatten lesser mortals. My wandering work life took me through enough red-light districts, karaoke bars, massage rooms, beer gardens, and late-night canteens to know this: when many preach morality, you practice endurance. When many cling to face, you cling to each other. And when many judge, you simply get on with life, raising children, paying rent, sending money home, keeping your laughter alive like a stubborn flame that refuses to go out.
I’ve had more than one conversation with you—not as “development expert” and “beneficiary,” that ugly pair of roles invented by NGOs that should know better—but woman to woman, woman to kathoey, or woman to anyone who felt like the world had shoved them into a corner and then blamed them for the lack of sunlight. You offered stories with a generosity that still disarms me: stories of first clients, first fears, police raids, jealous boyfriends, violent customers, and the clumsy kindness of good ones. Many of you told me about your mā (mother), your debts, your dreams of opening a shop, or your secret hope of going back to school. And sometimes, in these midnight confessions over iced tea or cheap rice wine, I found some of the best people in this cruel, hypocrisy-drenched world.
Let me tell you this plainly: resistance is not always a fist in the air. Sometimes it is showing up for another shift. Sometimes it is getting tested regularly even when the clinic treats you like a stain. Sometimes it is refusing to let shame settle in your bones. But collective resistance—ah, that’s the real fire. When you unionize, when you form collectives, when you learn the law better than the officer threatening to arrest you, when you refuse to be “rescued” by people who have never asked if you actually want rescuing—that is when the walls tremble.
So resist. Unionize. Speak out. Join your phi nong (Thai for “sisters and siblings”) in the struggle. Demand to be heard, not hidden. The world may call your work “immoral,” but Auntie sees your courage, your skill, your hustle, your tenderness, your anger, your humour. I see the way you protect newcomers, raise each other’s children, share rent, share condoms, share dignity. And I will keep standing with you—loudly, lovingly, and absolutely unafraid.