Sex Employment Research Articles

On Institutionalized Sexual Economies: Employment Sex, Transactional Sex, and Sex Work in Kenya’s Cut Flower Industry

Today Kenya boasts the longest standing, largest, and most lucrative cut flower industry across Africa, concentrated around Lake Naivasha. Naivasha’s flower farms depend on a female migrant labor market that operates within a system of intense gender discrimination, sexual harassment, and sexual-economic exchange. Female labor migrants sometimes participate in types of sexual commerce that are so entrenched within the cut flower industry that they can be termed an “institutionalized sexual economy.” Drawing on feminist ethnography and migration stories, this article documents the gendered and unequal labor continuum of sexual commerce that exists at Naivasha’s flower farms. This includes how female labor migrants exchange sex for employment at the flower farms—what I call “employment sex”—and how they engage in transactional sex with flower farm managers, supplement their incomes with part-time sex work, and move in and out of full-time, street-level sex work as their temporary flower farm contracts turn over. Examining this labor continuum of sexual commerce provides insight into the broader context of local employment options and conditions, work practices and policies, migration patterns, gender relations and unpaid labor, and the sex workers’ rights movement. This article is the first to use critical feminist theories to examine sexual commerce at flower farms and to place the sex-work-as-work debate squarely in the context of the cut flower industry. The absence of this subject from scholarship to date has contributed to a lack of sex worker perspectives, experiences, and sociocultural understandings of institutionalized sexual economies in Africa.

Constitutional Limitations on Closing the Gender Gap in Employment

Although discrimination on the basis of sex in employment and education has been prohibited for over forty years, essentially two generations, women lag behind men in workplace achievement by almost every measure. The most prestigious and well-paying jobs continue to be held predominantly by men, and at nearly every level, women’s pay is less than men’s pay. When race is also taken into account, the disparities are shocking. And at least some gap remains when every variable but sex is controlled for. Study after study has attempted to measure the cause of these disparities, finding some explanatory value in the number of hours worked, consistent attachment to the workplace, and gender segregation in the labor market. These three factors have been attributed to choices women have made, and thus, as not a proper subject for law or government programs to address. Even accounting for those factors, however, persistent pay and achievement gaps remain that can only be explained by sex discrimination – in other words, that employers are considering sex when they make decisions that affect hiring, promotion, or pay. Regardless of the reasons, the legal structures we have employed have not worked to eliminate this achievement gap. And just at a time when we might want to consider new ways to approach it, the Supreme Court, in cases such as Ricci v. DeStefano, Dukes v. Wal-Mart, Douglas v. Independent Living Center of Southern California, and National Federation of International Businesses v. Sebelius, is suggesting that the Constitution may impose limits on how we might use the law

Private Nurses and Playboy Bunnies: Explaining Permissible Sex Discrimination

Discrimination on the basis of sex in employment is illegal--usually. In cases in which employers contend that sex-based hiring is necessary to protect the privacy interests of their customer, however, and in cases in which employers contend that sex-based hiring is necessary to provide a particular type of sexual titillation for their customers, courts sometimes do allow employers to discriminate. Courts say that they allow sex discrimination in employment when it is necessary to preserve the "essence of the business." This Article shows, however, that there is no plausible conception of business "essence" that can explain and make sense of the existing case law. The Article therefore looks beyond the courts' rhetoric to explain and defend why courts distinguish in the ways they do between permissible and impermissible sex discrimination in employment.

The Way Forward for Equal Opportunities by Sex in Employment in Turkey and Britain

Providing a review of the legal framework, national machinery, and organizational approaches to sex equality in Turkey and Britain, this paper identifies patterns and trends of change and explores how real change towards sex equality could be achieved in both countries. It is explained that despite the socioeconomic and cultural differences between Turkey and Britain, women in both countries share a common position as a disadvantaged group in employment. However, it is demonstrated that the nature of proposed agendas of change in legislation, state policy, and organizational approaches to equality shows divergence between Turkey and Britain.

The way forward for equal opportunities by sex in employment in Turkey and Britain

The way forward for equal opportunities by sex in employment in Turkey and Britain