Experiences of working conditions and double presence in cisgender female sex workers from the Guadalajara Metropolitan Area

Abstract

The article begins with the experiences and lived realities of cisgender female sex workers in the Guadalajara Metropolitan Area, focusing on two fundamental axes: their working conditions and what is known as double presence—that is, the constant tension between paid work and caregiving responsibilities. To approach these realities, the study draws on two theoretical frameworks. On one hand, it turns to George Berkeley's idealism, particularly his idea that to be is to be perceived, which helps explain how external social perception ultimately shapes the material living conditions of these women. On the other hand, it uses the social constructionism of Berger and Luckmann to analyze how labor and social realities are collectively built through shared meanings and interaction processes within the specific context of the metropolitan area.

Methodologically, the research took a qualitative approach, using a case study design aimed at recovering the voices and deep experiences of the participants. Throughout 2025, twelve in-depth interviews were conducted, along with field observation and a mapping of the social actors involved. The analysis was organized around five categories: being a woman, being a sex worker, working conditions, social reality, and double presence. From there, the testimonies gathered made it possible to construct a dense, nuanced account of these women’s daily lives.

Each of these categories took on meaning through the words of the interviewees themselves. For Themis, 41 years old, being a woman implies a kind of imposing authority, a form of presence that allows her to move through risky spaces with a certain degree of control. In her experience, femininity becomes a tool for negotiation and hierarchy. Kali, 71 years old, describes being a sex worker as an experience of physical alienation: the body is lent out for service, rest is postponed, and the uniform ends up functioning as a mechanism that hides precarity behind a façade of hygiene. For her part, Yamaya, 25 years old, talks about working conditions as a complex reality marked by informality, insecurity, and a system of unwritten rules that takes the place of any legal rights.

Social reality, in the words of Artemisa, 27 years old, is experienced as a battlefield for survival and recognition. For her, society is an entity that uses them at night but points fingers at them during the day—a constant hostility that permeates her life. Finally, double presence finds one of its most eloquent testimonies in Hera, 38 years old, who describes it as a mental juggling act in which she must ensure that her role as provider does not contaminate the image her children have of her. Being a mother and a sex worker means living in constant alert so that these two worlds never touch, and this tension generates a psychosocial exhaustion that weighs even more than physical fatigue.

What the study reveals is that these women sustain their families’ well-being from a paradoxical position. They are the economic backbone of the household, yet they do so amid extreme labor precarity and a total lack of legal recognition. Double presence is not merely a matter of time management; it is an experience of identity fragmentation that forces them to navigate contradictory roles simultaneously. And all of this takes place in a context where stigma operates as a symbolic and structural device that renders invisible the psychosocial, biological, and ergonomic risks they face on a daily basis.

The lack of regulation and the legal vacuum not only deepen precarity but also fuel the violence they encounter from clients, who often act with impunity, shielded by a system that dehumanizes these women. As the article points out, sex work in Guadalajara rests on a deep contradiction: women as economic pillars in the face of institutionalized precarity that simultaneously criminalizes and leaves them unprotected.

From the perspective of communication studies, the research offers a key insight: it reveals how social perception frameworks and stigma function as symbolic barriers that silence these women’s voices, while at the same time turning communication into a tool of resistance and a means of managing dual identities between the public and the private. The study concludes by emphasizing the urgency of moving away from a criminalizing gaze and instead building forms of institutional communication that recognize their human rights and the central role they play in the social structure.