Close your eyes and think of a CEO, or world leader, and chances are most of you (although I expect less than you think) are imagining a male. Yes, a long line of male CEOs, presidents, politicians, and prime ministers; shows our narrative of “leadership” is twisted by asymmetrical societal gender norms But what about “victimhood”? Is society’s view of vulnerable people twisted in the opposite way, with the same narrative of one-sidedness, but with male voices, unceremoniously erased from the conversation? Well, close your eyes again and imagine a victim of abuse, sexual violence, or someone whose assaulted by their partner… Is it a woman? What about someone who’s trafficked? I am sure the same lazy, exclusionary, and cartoonish narratives beleaguer these areas too, but in the inverse way. And, let’s be clear – just as they are wrong about CEOs, they are wrong here too. Because nearly half of new business owners are female, and a similar percentage of those trafficked globally, are male. But… we never hear of them. The words of urgency and care for the tens of thousands of trafficked men and boys are heard only in quiet corners of the internet, whispered in comment sections, or spoken about by a small gaggle of brave advocates. And the same missing pieces exist when discussing those doing the trafficking too… who I expect you’d imagine as being male – but in reality, 26% are not. Yes, at least one in four traffickers are female, again so rarely spoken about, whose erasure only leaves more people vulnerable. So is it time we talked about #humantrafficking in all of its ugly fullness? Is it time we spoke about all victims, both male and female, and all perpetrators, if we are really serious about ending such a heinous crime? What do you think? ~ UN DOC Trafficking 2022 UN DOC Trafficking 2024 Reuters Images by Andrej Lisakov, Behrooz, Darius Bashar, Davide Ragusa, and Ya Wahyu

2025-04-21