INCOME AND STREET AS CONSENSUS ON QUALITY OF LIFE BY FEMALE SEX WORKERS, TO MAINTAIN DIGNITY AND WELL-BEING

The objective was to understand the consensual universe of representational meanings constructed about quality of life by female sex workers. The qualitative study based on the Theory of Social Representations, from a procedural perspective, with 132 women from the Productive Upper Sertão of Bahia, Brazil. The free word association test and in-depth interviews were adopted as data collection techniques. The evocations were processed in the Tri-Deux-Mots software and the interviews were submitted to the IRAMUTEQ software. Both software programs performed factorial correspondence analyses, with different and complementary analysis perspectives. Reading the factorial maps of the evocations and the lexical analysis of the discourses made it possible to consider the similarities and complementarities. The consensual universe of social representations resides in the meanings closest to the axis of congruence of the factors, whose highlighted items are important to achieve quality of life (money, income, comfort and family relationships), from where and/or how they acquire these items (street and work). It is concluded that financial return (income and money) and the street were consensual aspects that provide the achievement of quality of life among female sex workers, as they are associated with characteristics that they consider essential for maintaining well-being and dignity.