The Traffic in Women
Essay by Emma Goldman
"The Traffic in Women" is an essay by anarchist writer Emma Goldman in 1910. It has been circulated in a variety of publications, namely Anarchism and Other Essays (1910), published by Mother Earth, as well as the leading essay of The Traffic in Women, and Other Essays on Feminism (1971). Mother Earth was a monthly anarchist magazine founded by Goldman, Max Baginski, and others in 1906. The essay is one of more than 20 articles that Goldman wrote during 1906 to 1940.
Content
The essay was written in response to the actions of contemporary social reformers campaigning against white slavery, whose legislative campaign Goldman claimed would only serve to create "fat political jobs" for "parasites". In the essay, she argues that the major cause of white slavery, that has been ignored by these reformers, is capitalist exploitation. Goldman criticizes the role played by Christian churches in historically encouraging and maintaining prostitution. Goldman presents marriage as on the same continuum as prostitution, arguing that in both cases women are sold and circulated, and is critical of "moralists" who condemn prostitution but not marriage for monetary considerations. Goldman further argues that double standards surrounding male and female sexuality pressure women who engage in sexual activity outside marriage into a life of prostitution, thereby "society creates the victims that it afterwards vainly attempts to get rid of".
Reception and legacy
American radical feminist writer Alix Kates Shulman strongly endorsed the essay, reading the entirety of it into the record of a legislative hearing on prostitution in New York.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 18, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q24041338. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1910, 1971, 1906 and 1940.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Traffic in Women” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.