Education when equally accessible and comprehensive provides a shield against this vulnerability toward human trafficking.

This blog discusses how equity destroys stigmas and provides safety for individuals at risk for human trafficking. (Part 3 of 4)

Equity is defined by merriamwebster.com as “freedom from bias or favoritism, justice according to natural law and right, remedial justice and justice and proportional fairness” (2023). In social activism, equity is an important concept. “Equity means meeting community members where they are by providing resources that are proportionate to what they need to thrive.” (United Way, 2023). In education, equity is vital to give everyone, no matter who they are. In this blog, we cover five ways to combat exploitation through equitable education. 

1. Equitable access to educational resources helps move populations trapped and intentionally kept by oppression and poverty from the same resources others have to have health, success, empowerment and their needs met. 

2. Greater educational opportunities: increasing funding for poor and marginalized communities - this requires dismantling racist and oppressive systems to bring about educational equity by giving access to opportunities that privileged individuals are born into (Walker, Pearce, Boe & Lawson, 2019). 

3. Breaking the bias that trafficked people is not as intelligent as the rest of us. Research tells us that trafficked individuals are not stupid, necessarily uneducated, or not wise. Their vulnerabilities are exploited and taken advantage of, whether they come from poverty, are refugees, marginalized because of race, gender or sexual orientation. It is not about intelligence, it is about the unjust systems that individuals find themselves born into (Schwartz, Alvord, Daley, Ramaswamy, Rauscher & Britton, 2019).  

4. Policy creation: at the federal level is one part of changing the stories of vulnerability that keep people trapped in poverty cycles, cut out from access to economic empowerment through education, sexualized and fetishized, and more easily accessible to traffickers because the systems in place allow exploitation to flourish (Bruce, 2019; Shih, 2021). 

5. Comprehensive sex education that destigmatizes sex, uncouples it from being bad or wrong, affirms and inclusive, and gives tools to navigate consent and refusal. All of these provide building blocks for individuals to be more equipped to navigate the psychological, physical, and relational dynamics inherent to sexuality. It is also a preventative measure for sexual exploitation (Wood, Hurst, Wilson, & Burns-O’Connell, 2019). 

Equity provides a space to honor every individual's humanity. In a world where there is so much hate because of how someone looks, or because of who they love, we need to intentionally create these spaces to provide everyone with the same opportunity free of discrimination and harm. One way we can all start to do this on the individual level is to check our own biases and acknowledge where we have opportunities that others have not. Starting by looking within is how we can begin to deconstruct those narratives that harm others and free us from the biases they create in our minds. At the same time, we are internally working with ourselves. Our feet, hands, and voices can actively participate in one of the points above, whether it is advocating for policy change and creation or attending school board meetings. There is always something we can do, and no thing is too small. All that matters is that we start somewhere! 

References: 

• Ainscow, M. (2020). Promoting inclusion and equity in education: lessons from international experiences. Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy, 6(1), 7-16.

• Bruce, A. (2019). When Your Colonizers Are Hypocrites: Federal Poverty Solutions and Indigenous Survival of Sex Trafficking in Indian Country. Nat'l Law. Guild Rev., 76, 140.

• Schwarz, C., Alvord, D., Daley, D., Ramaswamy, M., Rauscher, E., & Britton, H. (2019). The trafficking continuum: Service providers’ perspectives on vulnerability, exploitation, and trafficking. Affilia, 34(1), 116-132.

• Shaeffer, S. (2019). Inclusive education: A prerequisite for equity and social justice. Asia Pacific Education Review, 20(2), 181-192.

• Shih, E. (2021). The trafficking deportation pipeline: asian body work and the auxiliary policing of racialized poverty. Feminist Formations, 33(1), 56-73.

• Walker, J., Pearce, C., Boe, K., & Lawson, M. (2019). The Power of Education to Fight Inequality: How increasing educational equality and quality is crucial to fighting economic and gender inequality. Oxfam.

• Wood, Rachel, Julia Hirst, Liz Wilson, and Georgina Burns-O'Connell. 2019."The pleasure imperative? Reflecting on sexual pleasure’s inclusion in sex education and sexual health." Sex Education 19(1): 1-14.

• United Way. (2023). “Equity-Definition.” Accessd on June 15, 2023. https://unitedwaynca.org/blog/equity-and-social-justice/#:~:text=Equity%20means%20meeting%20community%20members,need%20in%20order%20to%20thrive.