Sex worker movements address issues of labor rights, gender-related violence, social stigma, migration, access to health care, criminalization, and police violence and have evolved to address local conditions and historical challenges.[1][2] Although accounts of sex work dates back to antiquity, movements organized to defend sex workers' rights are understood as a more recent phenomenon. While contemporary sex worker rights movements are generally associated with the feminist movement of the 1970s and 1980s in Europe and North America, the first recorded sex worker organization, Las Horizontales began in 1888 in Havana, Cuba.[1]
An important moment in that movement was the shift from using the term prostitution to using the term sex work to emphasize their role as workers.[3] The term, coined by Carol Leigh and Margo St. James, played an influential role in the sex worker movement in the U.S. and abroad.[3] Sex work as a political issues has been a source of considerable debate within feminist movement.[4]
The onset of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s framed sex work as a public health issue and led some state organizations and community groups to work more closely with sex worker organizations in HIV/AIDS prevention efforts.[5]