A recent manifestation of the North/South, East/West political-economic divide is the international sex trade in women, of which trafficking in women for purposes of sexual employment is a large subset. Trafficking in humans in general, and women in particular, has taken center stage in many nation-states as an issue of a threat to national security and societal cohesion. This article explores some of the basic facts about trafficking and spotlights it as a truly global phenomenon, with its contemporary origins in the international capitalist market system. Furthermore, it argues that the international political economy of sex not only includes the supply side-the women of the third world, the poor states, or exotic Asian women-but it cannot maintain itself without the demand from the organizers of the trade-the men from industrialized and developing countries. The patriarchal world system hungers for and sustains the international subculture of docile women from underdeveloped nations.

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