Quality of life from women’s perspective in the exercise of sex work: a study of social representations

OBJECTIVES: to analyze the social representations elaborated by sex workers from Alto Sertão Produtivo Baiano about quality of life. METHODS: a qualitative study, based on the Social Representation Theory, carried out in the region of Alto Sertão Produtivo Baiano, with 30 sex workers. Individual in-depth interview was carried out, with speeches organized in a corpus and treated in IRAMUTEQ, enabling lexical analysis for Descending Hierarchical Classification. RESULTS: four thematic classes emerged, in which social representations of quality of life pervade: money earned to supply needs; association with healthy living and obtaining health (physical and mental); balance of emotions (although there are some negative sensations such as fear and anxiety); and faith in a deity. FINAL CONSIDERATIONS: the social representations elaborated by sex workers about quality of life are anchored in concepts, subjective and practical, punctuated by the World Health Organization.