Paper short abstract:

Using interviews conducted in low-income areas of Dar es Salaam, I examine how a focus on transactional sex provides insights into gendered economic inequalities, the cultural construction of love and social trust, and the role of transactional sex in the continuation of poverty across generations.

Paper long abstract:

In transactional sex (henceforth TS), girls and women engage in sexual relationships with men who give money or material gifts in return. TS differs from prostitution in that gift exchanges for sex are often part of long-term relationships. Whereas earlier studies concentrated on poor women who were compelled to have sex with men to meet their basic needs, it is increasingly understood that there is a continuum between 'survival sex' and those sexual transactions in which women strive to obtain Western consumer goods for status purposes. On the basis of interviews conducted in 2010 and 2012 in low-income areas of Dar es Salaam, I examine first how TS illuminates the economic inequalities that prevail between women and men in Sub-Saharan Africa and posit that the money given in transactional sex should not be viewed from a Western perspective as merely an impersonal medium of rational exchange, but as having a strong emotive component. On the other hand, TS seems to contribute to low levels of social trust not only in heterosexual relationships, but also in relationships between parents/grandparents and children. In the context of chronic poverty, familial strategies out of poverty depend on cooperation among family members, but TS offers individuals competing social networks outside the family through which they can increase their social, emotional and economic capital. From the family's point of view, however, the problem with TS is that it can lead to the intergenerational transmission of familial and female poverty through early pregnancy and early marriage.