Abstract
In a study of life satisfaction in Nicaragua, Cox (2012) found that female sex workers had dramatically low subjective well-being (SWB) relative to other marginalized groups in Nicaragua. Moreover, the SWB of these female sex workers was possibly the lowest recorded in the life satisfaction literature. A novel theory linking life satisfaction with life stories is proposed, and a method not heretofore used in SWB research is employed, the life story interview, in order to better understand the dramatic unhappiness of this sample. Seeing life satisfaction as an identity invoking process, the sample’s dramatically low life satisfaction judgments are framed within the larger context of narrative identity. Thematic analysis of the stories revealed a prototypical narrative arc: early family conflict, departure from home, a series of unsuccessful romantic relationships, birth of multiple children, dire economic crises, entry into sex work, and hope for a future exit from sex work. The life stories of these participants provided an identity and life course context to understand the dramatic unhappiness of this sample.
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Notes
These paradigms can relate to different nomenclature. The term sex worker can signify an empowerment perspective as it highlights the activity as a kind of work as opposed to conjuring the moral conations that can come with the word prostitute. The current paper largely uses the term sex worker instead of prostitute. This is done not to stake an explicit position in favor of the empowerment paradigm, but rather because we find the term to describe the phenomenon more straightforwardly.
Stevens’ construct of Marianismo has been criticized as more descriptive of middle class Latin American women, a criticism we accept. But our pilot interviews in Nicaragua found evidence for a Marianismo-like conception of womanhood, which is why we invoke it here.
Nicaragua is not a monolithic cultural entity. The Latinized central and western parts of the country are significantly different than the Caribbean East of the country. This study is exclusively concerned with a sample from the Latinized portion of the country.
In Nicaraguan Spanish the phrase "hijo de puta" is a common insult. The word "puta" is a diminutive of "prostitute." Directly translated, the phrase means, “son of a prostitute,” but it is better translated as, “son of a whore,” or, “son of a bitch.” The common curse illustrates the linguistic codification of scorn for sex workers.
We recognize that the fact that our interviewer was male most certainly affected the interview responses of the sex workers. A life story interview is a kind of social performance, an intimate one indeed, and the audience influences the content and nature of the performance. A female interviewer would have likely elicited somewhat different responses. But we do not take either kind of response as necessarily more or less true; they are simply rather somewhat different narrative performances for different audiences. .
The UNDF ranks Nicaragua as one of the three poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere.
The prototypical narrative arc resembles theories of the downward spiral (Schumm et al. 2006).
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Cox, K.S., Casablanca, A.M. & McAdams, D.P. “There is Nothing Good About this Work:” Identity and Unhappiness Among Nicaraguan Female Sex Workers. J Happiness Stud 14, 1459–1478 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-012-9390-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-012-9390-y