La escolaridad en trabajadoras sexuales de la ciudad de San José, Costa Rica, al iniciarse el siglo XXI

Abstract

Schooling in sex workers from San José, Costa Rica, at the beginning of the twenty-first century. San Jose is the capitol city of Costa Rica, a small Central American country characterized by a higher educational level, higher per capita income and higher living standards than the rest of the countries in the region. A study in 1975 indicated that female sex workers in the city were women who had chosen sex work because they earned much more than in other job options available to women who only had finished part of the primary school, and that nearly half did not want to change their activity. In order to know whether the situation had changed three decades later, in 2008 we interviewed 78 women who perform sex work in the city, with fares between US$3 and US$100 per hour and ages between 18 and 81 years. The interviews were based on a questionnaire; respondents were paid for their time, and data were analyzed with the SPSS statistical program. Most of these workers are Costa Ricans of urban origin, few have education beyond primary school, and they consider that the school years that they approved -despite receiving little help in this area from their families-are among their main achievements in life. One third of the women said that they had had a pleasant childhood, and most stated that they do not see a conflict between their work and religious beliefs because they provide sexual services to support their children (most are single mothers). Some believe that their work reduces sexual violence; most use condoms as protection and believe in the patriarchal view that women raise families while men provide resources. Universities could support these women with grants and advice; and finance more studies to separate myth from reality in this field, for example, with studies based on life histories, a technique that would give sex workers a voice from the conception of their own worlds and the environment in which they develop. KEY WORDSEducation, sex work, socialization, patriarchy, culture, prostitution. La ciudad conurbada de San José, en Costa Rica, tenía en 1980 unos 730 000 habitantes (Costa Rica Ministerio de Economía 1998), de los cuales unas 1400 eran mujeres dedicadas al trabajo sexual en aproximadamente 200 lugares de la ciudad (Acuña et al. 1982). Esto corresponde a un índice de 2 trabajadoras sexuales por cada 1000 habitantes. Uno de los primeros estudios que incluyó el tema de la escolaridad encontró que en el San José de la década de 1970 estas trabajadoras eran mujeres que habían elegido el trabajo sexual porque ganaban mucho más que en las demás opciones laborales que tenían, dado su nivel de escolaridad, en general limitado a la escuela primaria, y que cerca de la mitad no deseaban cambiar de actividad (Vega 1975).Una encuesta hecha en 1980 a 348 mujeres halló que eran en general madres solteras o separadas de sus maridos, con una media de 2,6 hijos por mujer; y que un 70% inició el trabajo sexual siendo mayores de edad, muchas tras haber tenido otros trabajos. Un 68% declararon no haber...