Rural Prostitution - The Case of Sitio Catuday, Roxas, Isabela

Abstract

Capitalism today has gone too far in search for money. It turns everything into a commodity for people to buy including women. In this system, everything is reduced to profit and cash relations. This is where prostitution begins. Women are reduced as sex objects for males to buy. Capitalists and males dominate not only the economic system but also the political and socio-cultural systems of the society. These same class and sex are also the political leaders and heads of socio-cultural structures/institutions. They are the same group of people controlling the society. Government officials, police officers, and lawmakers cannot stop or will not stop prostitution. They tolerate the existence of establishments being used as fronts in the prostitution industry because they are just the "political representatives" of the capitalists who own such establishments. They belong to the same class to that of the capitalists so they will never stop the operations of prostitution establishments. These people will always try to protect the interest of their own class. Poverty and unemployment are the main driving forces that lead women into prostitution. These conditions are also brought by capitalism. The capitalists control the means and mode of production of the economy, thus, they are the ones getting richer and richer. The proletariats or the working class are the ones being exploited because what they have is labor power only. In capitalism, the method to get maximum profit is to lessen the cost of production of a certain good or service. Ways to lessen the cost of production include making the wages of the laborers lower or even decreasing the number of laborers to pay by waiving some so that bigger amount of profit will go to the capitalists. Indeed, this economic system only makes the rich capitalists richer while those already poor laborers poorer. This system aggravates social problems such as poverty and unemployment due to the inequality in the distribution of wealth. These social problems brought by capitalism then become the agents that push poor women into prostitution. Prostitution also is a form of the domination of males over females. This domination is prevalent because it is reinforced by the socio-cultural institutions/structures of the society. The family, the church, etc. are patriarchal in nature, they are headed and run by males, thus the subordination of females by the males is socially and culturally constructed. Therefore, with conditions such as poverty and unemployment brought by the control of the country's wealth by only a few capitalist elites plus the subordination of women in the society, many are forced to enter menial and degrading "works" just to earn money and one of them is prostitution.