2008 Woodie Awards
Frank Church Symposium
Lederer offers in depth view of women and children's rights
Ryan Hunter
Issue date: 3/7/07 Section: News
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Attendance for many of the events was robust, and the amount of public participation in the question and answer periods that followed many of the addresses surprised several speakers.
"This is quite the sophisticated crowd," said Laura J. Lederer, keynote speaker for the symposium, during her speech Wednesday night. "I was expecting to have to teach Trafficking in Persons 101, but now I guess I should have been prepared to answer tough questions."
Lederer focused her address on worldwide trafficking of women and children, and how this is fostered by their position in the world as second-class citizens.
"Cultural trends such as infanticide of female babies has contributed to a severe decline in the female population in places like China and India," said Lederer. "This has facilitated the creation of a flourishing sex black market, which greatly contributes to the pervasiveness of human trafficking of women and children."
She went on to give other examples of how cultural trends such as women lacking property rights, inheritance rights, and divorce rights also contributed to the prevelance of the industry by causing poor, uneducated, or unemployed women to respond to fake ads promising work in other countries, only to be trafficked upon arrival.
Lederer cited the fact that roughly 80 percent of trafficked persons are women, but that the issue is rarely looked at as a women's rights issue. Trafficked women are sometimes sold for the purpose of manual labor (i.e. farming, mining, sweatshops, domestic servitude, etc.), but are most commonly trafficked for sex work. Children, Lederer continued, are usually trafficked to work in jobs requiring small stature or light workers, or extremely dexterous work such as tying rugs. Unfortunately, however, many children are also trafficked for the purpose of sex work.
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