A Feminist Perspective on Human Trafficking of Women and Girls ─ Characteristics, Commonalities and Complexities

Focusing on the trafficking of women and girls from a feminist perspective, this book examines how social structures and gender influence human trafficking. While women and girls are not the only victims of trafficking, they tend to be disproportionally represented. Structural inequities – including poverty, gender-based violence, racism, class and caste-based discrimination and other forms of oppression and marginalization – place some individuals at substantially greater risk to be trafficked.

The contributors explore topics including trauma-informed assessment of, and therapy with, survivors of human trafficking; issues facing children of trafficked women when they are reintegrated into their communities post-trafficking; the intersection of trafficking with racial and cultural oppression; critical aspects of international sex trafficking; and commercial sexual exploitation of children. The book concludes with a discussion of how human trafficking intersects with both intra-country adoption and brokered marriages. This book was originally published as a special issue of Women & Therapy.

Nancy M. Sidun is a clinical psychologist, academician, and art therapist. She is co-chair of the American Psychological Association’s system-wise taskforce on Trafficking of Women and Girls.

Deborah Hume is a teaching professor at the University of Missouri, USA, and member of Missouri’s statewide Human Trafficking Task Force. She is co-chair of the American Psychological Association’s system-wise taskforce on Trafficking of Women and Girls.