A group of women sit around a table making dream catchers with colorful bits of yarn, chatting about their families, work and the thick smog enveloping the city of Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand.
Just another workplace scene — except the women are all sex workers who meet their clients at the Can Do Bar, which they own as a collective, benefiting from health insurance, fixed hours and time off, which all are typically denied to sex workers.
The bar was set up in 2006 by the Empower Foundation, a nonprofit founded in Bangkok's Patpong red-light district for sex workers who are still stigmatized despite widespread tolerance of Thailand's thriving sex industry.
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