Introduction

To understand prostitution in Moldova we have to trace it back to the Soviet period from 1940, through the years following its independence in 1991 and up to the beginning of the twenty-first century. From being seen as alien to the state and not officially discussed to being considered a dangerous social vice, prostitution is now discussed mainly within the sexual trafficking agenda. Within this agenda are a number of questions, such as: can prostitution be justified? Why does it exist, and will it stop? Why are young women leaving Moldova? Are they deceived or forced? Do they know what they are getting into? The socio-economic position of Moldovan citizens and the attitudes of the general population towards prostitution and trafficking also form important parts of the current context wherein discourses are handled and reconstructed.

The national context

The Federal Republic of Moldova (hereafter Moldova) has a population of 4.3 million (UNDP, 2004). Approximately the same size as Belgium, Moldova is situated in Central Europe between Ukraine and Romania. Until August 1991 Moldova was the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic, a part of the USSR, and had been so since 1940 (UNDP, 2004). The historiography on gender relations and sexuality must therefore be contextualised by taking the conditions in the former Soviet Union into consideration. The country suffered hard from the demise of the Soviet Union, a series of natural disasters and the 1998 financial crisis in Russia (UNHCR, 2004, p 4).

Following independence, the economy was prioritised at the cost of social reforms: ‘[a]s economic reforms stall or are either wrongly constructed or implemented, the cost the Moldovan people has had to pay is great’ (Johansson, 2003, p 23). This process of transition to a market economy is thought to have contributed to the phenomenon of trafficking: ‘Sudden political change, economic collapse, civil unrest, internal armed conflict … greatly increase the likelihood that a country will become a source of trafficking … the victims may be one of the few resources of marketable wealth’ (US State Department, 2003, p 8).

Moldova was ranked number 122 according to its production in 2000, in between India and Honduras, with $2,672 per capita, which can be compared with Belgium's $281,590.