WOMEN are emerging as the pimps of the global trade in humans with a third of countries reporting more female traffickers than male, a United Nations study shows.

The first international report into the scope of human trafficking, published yesterday, found a disproportionate number of female perpetrators, more than in any other crime, selling other women into slavery in countries including Australia.

With demand for cheap goods and services rising with the fall of the world economy, experts fear labour exploitation will grow.

Sex slavery accounts for 79 per cent of all human trafficking, most victims being women and girls, says the UN Office on Drugs and Crime's Global Report On Trafficking In Persons.

It used data from 155 countries to establish patterns in trafficking and what individual nations were doing to fight it.