Regulation Of Sex Work Research Articles

Sex Work Regulation Across 85 Nations: The Political Economy of Prostitution

Despite the popularity and efficacy of laws that criminalize consumers in the sex industry, adoption of such policies is slow and limited. In other cases, countries act to adopt legal frameworks that may leave sex workers unprotected from violence or harm. How do we explain such different choices across different countries? To address this, I undertake a political and economic view of sex work, which refers specifically to prostitution in this study, and subsequently investigate political and economic characteristics across 85 countries as factors that may affect their selection of different types of sex work policies. Furthermore, I examine the impact of diverse political value systems as well as economic conditions. The project employs a multinomial logistic regression model to examine the relationship between these factors and the adoption of five different sex work policies. The analysis of data demonstrated that total female participation in the labor force was the most influential factor, followed by civil liberties and political rights, across the countries included in the study.

Optimising the public health benefits of sex work regulation in Senegal: Results from qualitative interviews with policy stakeholders.

There is compelling evidence that eliminating sexually transmitted infections (STIs) among female sex workers (FSWs) is a cost-effective approach to reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS. Although many countries recognise sex work as a public health issue, few have implemented public health policies specifically aimed at controlling the transmission of HIV/AIDS among FSWs. In particular, Senegal stands out as the only African country to regulate sex work through a specific public health policy that requires FSWs to register with a health centre. Despite the potential health and legal benefits associated with registration, a staggering 80% of FSWs in Senegal remain unregistered. This low registration rate hinders the realisation of the policy's full potential for public health benefits. The reluctance of FSWs to register is due to inherent flaws in the policy design, where the disadvantages of registration outweigh the benefits for FSWs. To identify which modifications to the current registration policy have the potential to increase uptake of registration by FSWs and to assess their feasibility in the context of Senegal. We conducted a qualitative policy research study using semi-structured in-depth interviews with 22 national stakeholders in this policy, including representatives from the police, government and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Dakar, Senegal, as well as FSWs' leaders. The interview data were thematically coded using the interview topic guide and other recurring themes and analysed using thematic analysis on Nvivo 12. A total of 20 relevant themes were selected, focusing primarily on assessing the feasibility of potential interventions and identifying potential barriers and associated risks. We found that, without changing current legislation, improving relationships between FSWs and police officers, providing accurate and accessible information about the rules and benefits of the policy, and offering psychosocial support have the potential to improve both the registration rate of FSWs and their wellbeing. Policy features designed to increase registration by improving FSWs' confidentiality, and thus their confidence in the services offered, were also discussed. The study highlighted that several national public health policies could be changed to increase the registration rate of FSWs and improve their wellbeing without overturning constitutional law.

Sex Work Policy in Poland and Its Impact on the Lived Experience of Sex Workers

This article discusses the model of sex work regulation in Poland. Officially ‎being an abolitionist one, it criminalises directly third parties, while in practice the whole working environment is criminalised, pushing sex workers into ‎shadow economy and precarious working conditions, and exposing them to ‎heightened risks of violence. At the same time, the Polish state does not provide any support programmes for sex workers. As such, it misrecognises sex ‎workers, who are not seen as workers or victims. This article looks at the prostitution policy from the perspective of sex workers’ rights. It also shows how ‎complicated sex work policy is, since the law includes contradictory rules and ‎values, which all have a negative impact on sex workers’ lives, and how these ‎contradictory rules contribute to misrecognition of sex workers, as workers, ‎subjects of rights and citizens, and to their stigmatisation.

Sanctioning Sex Work: Examining Generational Differences and Attitudinal Correlates in Policy Preferences for Legalization

ABSTRACT Research on public perceptions of sex work in the United States (U.S.) has narrowly focused on street sex work, rather than including many other forms of sex work, such as sexual services provided online. With recent federal legislation aimed at addressing human trafficking (FOSTA-SESTA) facing criticism for harming sex workers, especially those who work in online spaces, examining policy preferences for a wide range of forms of sex work is necessary. Analyzing these preferences can help inform policy development that reflects the realities of sex work and protects sex workers’ physical and economic health. Using a web-based survey of U.S. adults (N = 549), policy preferences were examined for the legalization and regulation of sex work. Thirteen forms of sex work were included, varying along dimensions of contact, space (in-person vs virtual), and entrepreneurship. Using a one-way analysis of variance, we examined generational differences in these attributions and found important age-related differences in both policy preferences and the reasons why respondents thought sex work should be illegal. We also addressed previously unexamined attitudinal correlates of these policy preferences using multivariate regression. We found that policy preferences for the illegality of sex work were negatively associated with attitudes toward abortion and positively associated with perceptions of government legitimacy. The findings of this study suggest that there are nuances in public opinion of sex work that are not currently reflected in U.S. policy, with generational differences indicating a shift away from criminalization.

Decriminalization and What Else? Alternative Structural Interventions to Promote the Health, Safety, and Rights of Sex Workers

Researchers have argued that the current punitive approaches to regulating sex work expose underlying structures that seek to preserve a social order embedded with stigmas related to the race, gender, sexuality, class, and migration status of sex sellers (Benoit et al [...]

The Society of San Guiñolé: Pederasty and Prostitution in La chula by Francisco de Sales Mayo

Male prostitution figures as a topic of anxiety and consternation throughout European cities in the second half of the nineteenth century. In Spain, medico-legal specialists, social commentators, and fiction writers evinced this preoccupation mostly in their written works. The author Francisco de Sales Mayo includes a secret society of pederasts in the plot of his novel La chula, which is ostensibly about female sex work and its regulation in 1850s–60s Madrid. Building on previous scholarship on Sales Mayo, this study is the first that foregrounds male homosexuality in La chula due to its fundamental role in understanding the novel. It interrogates the work’s construction of the trope of the Society of San Guiñolé, a secret organization rife with sexual inverts, as a critique of proponents of the regulation of sex work. Relying on recent scholarship regarding female prostitution, masculinities, and male homosexuality, the study argues that the author associates San Guiñolé’s secretive sexual practices with Spain’s political and religious (ultra)conservatives in order to show what he believes is their deviant mission to allow sex work to flourish in Madrid, corrupt the bourgeois male model of heteronormativity, and prevent a secular, republican government from taking power.

A Social-Legal Analysis of Reforms in the Regulation of Sex Work: The Case Study of End Demand Legislation in Israel

This article proposes an innovative approach to analysing legal and policy reforms in the regulation of sex work. Using the development of the Israeli 2019 Prohibition on the Consumption of Prostitution Act (hereinafter: End Demand Law) as a case study, we develop a socio-legal analytical framework which combines three elements: 1) the relationship between the “law on the books” and the “law in action” in the context of sex work policy – what are the distributive outcomes of the act? How is it implemented, who gets impacted by it, to which degree and why? 2) the importance of existing legal and policy baselines to evaluate new policy approaches. We argue that the baseline is key not only to understanding policy trajectories, but also to evaluating differences in perception of ‘End Demand’ legislation in different jurisdictions; 3) the lived experience of those affected by the policy. In our case study, sex workers are the population most directly impacted - we include their voices through interviews as well as secondary sources and focus on their perception of the law and its impact on their lives, options, livelihoods, and feminism.
 Combining these three elements, our analytical framework is used to evaluate the dynamics of change in the regulation of sex work in the context of the Israeli End Demand Law - how it came about, which baselines it emerged from and which international influences affected it, but also how Israeli anti-prostitution governance feminists influenced the legislative and policymaking process. We pay equal attention to sex workers’ voices not only as the most affected population, but also as political actors, activists and aspiring governance feminists in the Israeli context, who were marginalised in the legislative process.

“Shut Up and Take My Money!”: Revenue Chokepoints, Platform Governance, and Sex Workers’ Financial Exclusion

Sex work regulation is often debated from the perspective of state control: legalization vs decriminalization, ‘end demand’ vs criminalization. Ultimately, these debates center the State as the most significant arbiter in sex workers’ ability to conduct business. This paper contends that while state legislation has a significant effect on the material lives of sex workers, the terms of service of the US-based, privatized financial industry has a more immediate and widespread affect. Most sex workers make use of online payment applications as well as social media, even though both are highly discriminatory toward sex workers, regardless of the legal status of one’s employment as a sex worker, or even the laws in which the worker conducts their business. Rather than being treated as a luxury or privilege, access to both the worldwide web and the global network of banking are essential rights that enable full participation in contemporary society. Through an analysis of platform governance and revenue chokepoints, this paper argues that payment intermediaries function as an extra-legal regulation of sex work that has a more profound effect on sex workers’ material reality than State legislation, as these intermediaries control how they are able to secure business and be paid for it without having to answer to a voting demographic. Most of the world’s major social media and payment processing applications are based in the United States, which enables it to export the repercussions of the stigmatization and criminalization of sex work even within the boundaries of countries with differing legislation.

Understanding the Law’s Relationship with Sex Work: Introduction to ‘Sex Work and The Law: Does the Law Matter?’

This special issue of The International Journal of Gender, Sexuality and Law, edited by Laura Graham, Victoria Holt and Mary Laing, brings together a range of voices and knowledges on the issue of Sex Work and the Law: Does the Law Matter? Mirroring global and national sex worker campaigns, official consultations, policy and wider debates over the last two decades, there has been much academic interest in the legal responses to sex work (Scoular and O’Neill, 2007; Graham, 2017; Munro and Della Giusta, 2008). Much of this work has evaluated the varied current legal responses to sex work, how they impact sex workers’ lives, and how the law might be reformed. There is also significant academic and governmental interest in comparative research looking at legal responses across jurisdictions (Armstrong and Abel, 2020; Levy, 2014). This special issue takes a broad, critical approach to the relationship between sex work and the law, inspired by Jane Scoular’s (2010) question: does the law matter in sex work? In doing so, this special issue offers an interdisciplinary exploration of the complex relationship between law and sex work. This issue addresses global trends towards criminalisation of sex work, often predicated upon stopping trafficking, and considers the impact of these trends on sex workers, their rights, their working practices, and their marginalisation. It further examines the law’s response to new and emerging issues, such as COVID-19 and digital sex work, reflecting particularly on the varied impacts of over- and under- regulating sex work spaces. This special issue finally reflects on sex workers’ resistance – to current laws, to the expansion of laws, and to their lack of inclusion in debates around law. Throughout this issue, the voices of sex workers are integrated and prioritised, reflecting a commitment to inclusion of expert knowledges around the world.

Feminist advocacy and the push for sex work policy change

abstract This article proposes reasons for change in policy on sex work in South Africa and the feminist advocacy to lobby and petition for this change. It seeks to understand how recent advocacy by both sex workers and the organisations advocating on behalf of sex workers in pushing for policy change is feminist and explores whether it is in conversation with feminist principles. The article achieves this through an analysis of the activism, strategies, and campaigns to affect policy change, and the varying successes of these in raising awareness around issues faced by sex workers are highlighted. The exploration of sex work policy advocacy is contextualised through a comparison of various policy approaches regulating sex work globally. Feminist advocacy needs to focus on solutions from Africa and the South and consider the impact of the West on local advocacy. This includes the use of legislative frameworks implemented in first world countries, the links being made between sex work and trafficking and the impact of funding on research on sex work. Feminist advocacy is divided, and the article examines the possible reasons for this division and how feminist advocacy can be more effective, considering the unique socio-economic conditions in South Africa and the imperatives for policy change.

The Organisation of Sex Work in Bangladesh

This paper problematises the dominance of the Northern gaze on sex work. Because the organisation of sex work takes place under different modes in Bangladesh, sex work premises have a unique structure which sets them apart from sex work in the Global Northern contexts. In particular, the dichotomy between private and public life, which has influenced the structure and organisation of sex work in many Northern contexts, as well as the regulation of sex work, is less pronounced in the Bangladeshi context. By documenting the culturally distinct and varied experiences of regional sex workers in Bangladesh, this paper emphasises the diversity among sex workers and argues that ignoring the culturally-specific conditions of the organisation of sex work risks universalising sex workers as perpetual victims. This paper highlights the importance of acknowledging the cultural variability of sex work to understand the diversity of sex workers’ experiences.

Paulo Drinot. The Sexual Question: A History of Prostitution in Peru, 1850s–1950s.

The modern state’s approach to the world’s “oldest profession” has inspired historical work across geographies and time periods. Paulo Drinot’s excellent monograph on the history of prostitution in Peru is an important contribution to that scholarship. Because of Drinot’s serious engagement with this scholarship, he is able to place Peruvian history within the global context while signaling the local particularities of his case. This is all the more important because of the transnational nature of the scientific, at times pseudo-scientific, information that influenced state policies toward prostitution. The Sexual Question traces the emergence of prostitution as a social problem for the medical community, journalists, and state institutions in the late nineteenth century. Campaigns for the regulation of sex work clashed with arguments for its abolition. These debates generated state policies with consequences for prostitutes and their clients, neighbors of brothels, and the broader public. Experts placed venereal disease at the center of sex-work regulation. Drinot demonstrates, however, that eugenics, creating proper sexual citizens, and policing women’s freedoms were also significant drivers of policies around prostitution.

Quashing demand or changing clients? Evidence of criminalization of sex work in the United Kingdom

AbstractThe use of regulation of sex work is undergoing sweeping changes across Europe and client criminalization is becoming very widespread, with conflicting claims about the intended and actual consequences of this policy. We discuss changes in demand for paid sex accompanying the criminalization of prostitution in the United Kingdom, which moved from a relatively permissive regime under the Wolfenden Report of 1960, to a much harder line of aiming to crack down on prostitution with the Prostitution (Public Places) Scotland Act 2007 and the Policing and Crime Act of 2009 in England and Wales. We make use of two waves of the British National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (NATSAL2, conducted in 2000–2001 and NATSAL3, conducted in 2010–2012) to document the changes in both the amount of demand for paid sex and in the type of clients that have taken place across the two waves, and their possible implications for policies that frame prostitution as a form of crime.

The Continued Criminality of Selling Sex: A Trajectory of South African Sex Work Law Reform

AbstractThis article explores the regulation of sex work in South Africa and follows the trajectory of the South African Law Reform Commission (SALRC) in investigating whether sex work should be decriminalized. The legal regulation of sex work is a hotly contested topic. South Africa currently criminalizes the selling and buying of sex, but policy reform has been on the cards since the SALRC launched its project on the topic in the early 2000s. As most sex work policy responses are grounded in feminist theory, the article analyses the main theoretical ideologies and questions the influence of these ideologies in structuring sex work law reform in the South African context. The author calls for a more inclusive understanding of feminism and sex work, and the need to acknowledge the importance of rights discourse in furthering political growth and protecting sex workers’ constitutional rights.

Sex work and biopolitics: a Foucauldian analysis of Bill C-36 discourse in the Parliament of Canada

ABSTRACT This paper is a study of the discourse in the Parliament of Canada during the passage of Bill C-36. Introduced in June 2014, Bill C-36 was the Canadian government’s response to a Supreme Court of Canada decision that struck down Criminal Code provisions that prohibited certain activities associated with sex work. The Supreme Court found that the provisions unconstitutionally violated sex workers’ right to security of the person by imposing dangerous conditions on the profession. With Bill C-36, the Canadian government embraced an abolitionist approach to sex work regulation that further criminalized the practice by, among many things, making the purchase of sexual services illegal. To structure the discourse analysis, this paper relies heavily on Michel Foucault’s first volume of The History of Sexuality. Foucault posited that states use specific discursive strategies to regulate citizen’s sexual interactions to achieve biopolitical goals. This paper reveals that the discursive strategies proposed by Foucault were present in parliamentary debate over Bill C-36, and their presence provides insight into the capitalist and settler colonial objectives of Bill C-36.

British parliament flirts with sex work regulation

British parliament flirts with sex work regulation

Crossing borders: the intersectional marginalisation of Bulgarian Muslim trans*immigrant sex workers in Berlin

ABSTRACT Bordering situates immigrant sex workers at the margins of an already marginalised industry and naturalises the legal conditions of their dispossession and precarity. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Berlin, we offer a situated intersectional analysis of the everyday bordering experiences of Muslim trans*immigrant sex workers from Bulgaria (hereafter TISWs). Focusing on three interactional contexts – minority belonging within EU and German politics, encounters with medicolegal institutions, and the new sex work regulation in Germany – our study demonstrates both that everyday bordering experiences derive not solely from national border enforcement and citizenship regulation but also from intersectional sociocultural barriers imposed by non-state actors, while the internal bordering practices of the German state exacerbate the exclusion and marginalisation of sex/gender transgressive people and sex work. We conclude that despite their physical existence as EU citizens in Berlin, TISWs’ everyday bordering experiences require a more nuanced understanding of intersectional systems of oppression which postpones TISWs’ arrival in Berlin indefinitely.

Зміна правового статусу секс-роботи в Україні: думка населення, думка секс-робітників (соціологічний ракурс)

The concepts of “decriminalization” and “legalization” of sex work are defined. Based on a sociological study, the attitudes of the Ukrainian public and sex workers to the potential change in the legal status of sex services in Ukraine is characterized. Authors analyse the public attitude toward the concepts and phenomena of “sex work” and “sex workers”, level of awareness of the population and sex workers about the current legislation in the scope of sex work regulation in Ukraine and the attitude to it, opinions on potential conditions of decriminalization and expected changes as a result of changes in the sex work legal status, level of interest of sex workers in the fact of decriminalization and legalization and their readiness for possible changes. These studies show an utterly predictable contrast between the attitudes, desires and expectations regarding potential changes in the legal status of sex work in Ukraine of the average Ukrainian and a sex worker – from disinclination and rejection of such changes by the first to the unreadiness and possible radiant hopes of the latter. Thus, 51% of Ukrainians oppose the revocation of penalty for the voluntary provision of paid sex services, while 93% of sex workers are interested in the revocation of such penalty. Modelling the situation where the penalty for sex work is revoked, the potential improvements suggested by sex workers are the following: safer working conditions and reduced risks of violence – 74%; the possibility of legal protection from the police – 67%, in court and prosecutor’s office – 64%; reduction of stigma at the level of society – 58%, at the level of self-esteem – 53%; expected reduction in health risks, including HIV/STIs – 49%. The appropriateness to form a public attitude to sex work as a type of entrepreneurial activity, which should be regulated by labour, civil, economic, financial and other branches of law, and to sex workers as those who are entitled to refuse (a client, employer, profession in general), appropriate working conditions and trade union or judicial protection, anonymity, social guarantees and pensions, self-organization, etc. are proved.

Sex Work Regulation, Anti-trafficking Policy, and Their Effects on the Labour Rights of Sex Workers in Germany

This article provides an analysis of regulatory approaches to sex work, the status of sex workers’ labour rights, and the conflation of sex work and human trafficking, with reference to the example of Germany. It assesses the strengths and weaknesses of Germany’s approach to the regulation of prostitution and the ways it has been influenced by international debates challenging the status of sex work as work, as well as concerns about human trafficking. It analyses the Prostitution Act 2002 (ProstG), and the Prostitute Protection Act 2017 (ProstSchG), and their effects on the rights and working conditions of sex workers, as well as their aim of improving the safety of vulnerable sex workers and reducing the level of human trafficking and exploitation in the German sex industry. In particular, the article considers the impact of this legislation on those working in the sex industry, especially migrant women and those at risk of exploitation. Through its analysis of the existing approach to sex work in Germany, the direction of reform and the absence of a labour-rights approach to the regulation of sex work and the prevention of trafficking, the article highlights the fact that even a country that is -in principle - willing to accept sex work as work, has failed to grant labour rights to sex workers. The article argues that the Prostitute Protection Act has in some ways increased the vulnerability of sex workers rather than promoting their safety. In addition, it is argued that legislators should consider labour protection and labour rights as an alternative means of protecting sex workers, rather than (re)criminalizing aspects of sex work in the name of ‘protecting’ women by means of prohibition or control. Adopting a labour-rights approach rather than paternalistic approach would have the potential to bring about far-reaching reform of the relevant legislation both in Germany and internationally. Sex Work, Human Trafficking, Labour Rights, Criminalization, Prostitution, Sex Work as Work

Attachments to Victimhood: Anti-Trafficking Narratives and the Criminalization of the Sex Trade

Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Canada (Attorney General) v. Bedford to strike down criminal law provisions related to the regulation of sex work, the government passed Bill C-36, ultimately reaffirming the project of criminalizing prostitution. Also known as the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act (PCEPA), Bill C-36 is part of a global trend that shifts the state’s attention away from regulating sex work as a societal nuisance, and instead, puts forth a carceral agenda which situates sex workers as victims of an inherently exploitative and coercive sex trade – pivoting the punitive elements of criminal law onto clients and mythologized profiteers of the sex trade. Focusing on the testimonies of neo-abolitionists leading up to the implementation of Bill C-36, this article critically explores the ways sex work is constituted as a problem of ‘trafficking’ and how attachments to victimhood allow for renewed criminalization within this new regulatory framework.