Non-paying partnerships and its association with HIV risk behavior, program exposure and service utilization among female sex workers in India

Table 1 Profile of female sex workers according to their status of having non-paying sexual partners in India

Background characteristics	Number of FSWs	Have non-paying partner (N = 5235)	Have no non-paying partner (N = 2874)	Total (N = 8107)	P-value
Background characteristics	Number of FSWs	% or mean (SD)	% or mean (SD)	% or mean (SD)	P-value
Age (in years), Mean (SD)	8,107	31.6 (7.0)	31.8 (8.1)	31.7 (7.3)	0.194
Had no formal education	4,898	52.2	56.2	53.4	0.001
Had no income other than sex work	4,573	38.3	57.3	43.8	<0.001
Had financial debt	5,271	75.6	64.3	72.3	<0.001
Localite* to the city/village of interview	5,903	72.6	73.5	72.8	0.378
Place of solicitation
Home	1,259	14.8	14.8	14.8	1.000
Brothel/Lodge/Dhaba	1,851	10.3	17.7	12.5	<0.001
Street	4,997	74.9	67.5	72.7	<0.001
Cohabitation status				71.0
Cohabiting husband	3,792	72.4
Cohabiting non-paying partner	1,066	20.4
Non-cohabiting non-paying partner	377	7.2
Median duration of relationship (in years)	5,235	11
Age at sex work debut, Mean (SD)	8,107	25.9 (6.0)	25.5 (6.7)	25.8 (6.2)	0.010
Had sex with 10+ clients in a week	3,458	36.5	36.1	36.4	0.734
Consumed alcohol in past one month	3,563	39.0	41.8	39.8	0.020
Experienced physical violence in past six months	1318	17.3	16.6	17.1	0.448
Vulnerability index¹, Mean (SD)	8107	1.7 (0.7)	1.5 (0.8)	1.6 (0.8)	<0.001

SD: Standard deviation.
¹FSWs who were soliciting at street based sites, had financial debt and experienced physical violence were considered to be vulnerable [See Methods].
^*Localite has been defined in the context of place of residence of FSWs. If the place of residence (city/town/village) and place of interview (city/town/village) is same, then individual was considered localite; otherwise non-localite.

ISSN: 1471-2458