The Influence of Patriarchy in the New Exploitative Forms of Human Trafficking in Europe

Since its normative inception that human trafficking holds the heraldic baton of gender mainstream, the data provided by international agencies such as UNODC (Global report on trafficking in persons. UNODC. Last accessed on 24 June 2021 from https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/glotip/2018/GLOTiP_2018_BOOK_web_small.pdf, 2018) that in its Global Report on Trafficking in Persons states that 72% of worldwide human trafficking victims are females, and the European Commission that reports that 68% of the victims in the European territory are women and girls, confirms the international resolution in determining that women and girls are a particular vulnerable group to exploitation, in particular, for sexual purposes. However, despite the International standard bearer of gender mainstream on human trafficking, perpetrators seem to expand new exploitative forms ontologically related to the gender roles, and the “feminization of poverty,” such as: sham marriages; forced marriages; international adoption; surrogacy; and fraud for social benefits (European Commission, 2018). The lack of access of rights does not seem to be the main cause of human trafficking, since 44% of the victims in the European territory are European citizens (European Commission, 2018). In this case, a relevant research question is what are the causes that trigger a trafficking situation of a European citizen in the European territory? Can women and girls still be considered a vulnerable group in the twenty-first century to this phenomenon? Is the foundation of these new exploitative forms the false values of personal fulfilment of the role of the mother and wife? This paper will explore these questions through the conduct of a desk research analysis of seventy-five country and general reports and government’s reply of the twenty eight European Member states for the GRETA group in the period of 2015–2020.