Resistance to condom use in a Bangladesh brothel

The SHAKTI Project carried out by CARE, Bangladesh started in a 600-women brothel in Tangail in 1996. At baseline, condom use was three per cent. Initial strategies to improve usage rates included peer education and free condom distribution, with daily registration of number of condoms per woman. In November 1998, condom use was probably around 40 per cent. Issues such as divisiveness and competition, obeying madams and landowners, pleasing the donor, and facing the police, plagued the project. The locus of resistance to change was found less frequently within the individual sex workers than in the structures surrounding them. Removing these barriers produced increased condom use and, eventually, sales of condoms from sex workers to sex