Nepal’s capital city of Kathmandu hosts numerous dance bars, where young women and teenage girls entertain male customers every night. Most of the bar dancers are women, without much education, who come to the Kathmandu valley from smaller cities searching for jobs. Some willingly work in dance bars as they would be paid much lower salaries if they worked in shops or took up menial jobs. Others are forced or lured into it with false promises made by human traffickers, with close family members as the mediators. At least 20,000 young girls work in Kathmandu’s sex industry and more than 10,00 women and girls are trafficked into India annually, according to studies.
Shot in the Thamel area of Kathmandu, the hub of dance bars, this video features an interview with a young bar dancer who opens up about how her work has shaped her worldview.