Self-Care Practices and Associated Sexual Health Risks Among Cisgender Women Sex Workers in Colombia

Sex work is a social phenomenon characterized by exchanging sexual services for money or goods. In Colombia, it generally occurs in clandestine and unsafe environments due to social exclusion related to stigma, discrimination, and criminalization of the occupation. Sex workers may experience health risks due to the ineffectiveness of some self-care measures in exercising sexual practices.

This qualitative, constructivist, hermeneutic phenomenological study explored the sexual health self-care practices of 34 cisgender women sex workers over 18 years of age in Colombia from the analytical lens of intersectionality. Data were obtained through in-depth interviews face-to-face and discussion groups between July 2021 and March 2022.

After reflective thematic analysis with an inductive approach to the data, five general themes emerged: meaning of self-care promoting practices, relationship with the healthcare system, empowerment and personal autonomy, vulnerability of cisgender women sex workers, and low-risk perception.

The findings show the need to promote and provide humanized, friendly, and self-sustainable sexual health care with educational strategies that favor the intersectional cooperation of preventive care linked to the body, conceptual, and cultural memory of sex workers, providing them with the necessary tools to manage sexual health risks from their situated and contextual reality with a perspective of rights, social justice, and gender equity.