What happens to women who sell sex?

In my previous post I reviewed Modern Slavery by Kevin Bales and a couple of other people. I was interested in Chapter 4 because it is about prostitution. There is something interesting in Chapter 7 too. They write about a study that followed 130 prostitutes in London (I don't know why they write 'nearly 150', the number is precisely 130). The study is called "What happens to women who sell sex? Report of a unique occupational cohort" by Helen Ward and Sophie Day.

The title is misleading, because it is suggesting that if a woman begins to sell sex certain things will happen to her. Such as higher rates of murder, death through AIDS, death through alcoholic liver disease and intravenous drug overdose. As Kevin Bales et al state, this cohort did suffer from a higher mortality rate. They also had other health problems such as STIs.

What Bales et al don't point out though is that the authors of the study state quite clearly that 'The women followed up are not representative of sex workers in general or even the baseline cohort.' When you consider that '46 (of 72, 64%) reported previous or current addiction', it is obvious that they cannot be representative of sex workers generally. Only about 20% of sex workers are addicts.

There are two paragraphs in the study that put sex work in a completely different light from that which Bales et al intended. This takes some explaining, but it seems to me that we are talking about two different groups of women, the drug addicts and the non-drug addicts. The outcomes for sex workers in these two groups are very different.

Two points. 48% of the women owned their own homes, for women where household details were available. They found no major difference in health outcomes between those who left and those who remained in the sex industry. This suggests that structural factors (like addiction, housing, and social support) may be more predictive of long-term health than sex work itself.

I have quoted these two paragraphs below, adding emphasis for the most important points.

"The most significant problems related to mental ill health and substance misuse. The relation between these health problems and sex work is complex, and despite the longitudinal nature of this study, we are not able to determine causation. Multiple factors predispose sex workers in general to chronic ill health, including poverty and poor education. We were unable to control for these because of the relatively small numbers followed up, and limited baseline information on chronic health problems. However, it is clear that prejudice towards the sale of sex and legal penalties marginalised sex workers both during and after their time in the industry, and the majority of respondents attributed their symptoms to this burden of disrespect and the difficulties they faced in hiding what they did."

"Women also combined jobs within the sex industry with work, education, and training outside. Research participants reported that sex work created the opportunities for such initiatives (qualitative data not shown). However, on completing training, many women stayed in the industry. Given the new possibilities offered by higher education and vocational training, sex work must therefore be considered a positive choice, preferable to alternatives. In other words, sex work is not simply a form of social exclusion but a conduit to social mobility and opportunities such as home ownership and a family wage. Therefore, policies that emphasise ‘‘exiting’’ strategies are likely to have limited impact. Governments may sponsor training schemes for sex workers, but as we have shown women may well train but then combine new skills with sex work in order to retain the economic advantage and flexibility that the occupation can offer. In this study, sex work was a choice for the majority who were followed up, and for many a route out of poverty rather than a vicious circle of social exclusion."

review of Modern Slavery by Kevin Bales

This book isn't just about prostitution. There is one chapter on prostitution. The first sub-heading is Forced Prostitution in the West. Kevin Bales writes "The women and girls are commonly tortured if they  do not comply". The reference for this statement is for a 2004 paper by Gijsbert Van Liemt. This paper does not mention torture once. It does mention violence and the threat of violence without specifying the nature of this violence. It does not mention girls. So there is no physical torture.

Is there psychological torture? The paper mentions isolation for sex workers and domestic maids. It says that women are moved from brothel to brothel to prevent them from 'establishing relations of trust'.

There are two things wrong with that statement. Firstly women are moved to another brothel because some men don't want to see the same sex worker again and again. Secondly women in brothels often work with other women and are not isolated. If they do work alone then it isn't really a brothel and it will often be because it is illegal for women to work together.

Also they all have smart phones so they are in contact with anyone they choose either here or in their home countries. They have an app which means that even if they don't speak English they can have a conversation with anyone.

There is no doubt that some women are coerced into prostitution and some forms of coercion are subtle, but it's a bit of a stretch to call that psychological torture. In any case Kevin Bales isn't calling it psychological. Then to tack onto women 'and girls' seems deception to me.

The second sub-heading is Forced Prostitution in Africa and Asia. Kevin Bales writes about Japan as a destination for migrant sex workers.

"But another part of Japan's slavery problem is its euphemistically titled "Entertainment Industry," which includes brothels, strip clubs, bathhouses and street prostitution. The government has a special "entertainer visa," supposedly given to singers and dancers that will be giving performances in theatres and nightclubs. If this were true, then Japan would have more professional entertainers than the rest of the world combined.

In reality, the visa is used to import large numbers of foreign women to meet the demands of Japanese men for sex and "entertainment." Between 1996 and 2003, the number of visas issued each year more than doubled (see table 10).

In 2003, approximately 80,000 "entertainers" came from the Philippines and, over the years, around 40,000 women have come from Latin America on entertainer visas. Under intense pressure from human rights groups and other countries, Japan agreed to better police the entertainment visa system from March 2005, but no figures have been released showing a fall in the number of "entertainers" brought to Japan."

Kevin Bales has got this completely wrong. These entertainers were not prostitutes. Sociologist Rhacel Parreñas worked among them, interviewed them and saw the reality of their lives. She put it all in her book 'Illicit Flirtations: Labor, Migration and Sex Trafficking in Tokyo'.

70,000 out of 80,000 Filipina women have had their livelihood taken away from them. They were not prostitutes but some of them will now be. These do-gooders have forced women into prostitution. If Japan chooses to classify women who serve drinks and sing karaoke in nightclubs as 'entertainers' that is up to them and that shouldn't be a subject of sarcasm.

Professor Parreñas knows how to help these women. They should be paid during not just at the end of their contract. Middlemen brokers who take much of the profit should be removed from the system. This goes to the heart of the issue, do you avoid what exploitation there is by improving their conditions, or do you take away their livelihood? If you take away their chosen source of income they will be poorer and more likely to engage in actual prostitution. Whatever you do, you must be willing to try to understand the reality of their lives. Not making assumptions based on your (American conservative) world view.

The third sub-heading is Prostitution. In this section Kevin Bales states that some people believe all prostitution is slavery. For example, CATW. He mentions legalization but not decriminalization. He doesn't mention the Palermo Protocol.

He mentions the Nordic model in Sweden and writes that there is little evidence that it is working. He writes that there is no evidence that prostitution has been pushed underground in Sweden, which is odd because if there is just as much prostitution but it is now illegal then it is underground.

This is an interesting paragraph:-

"Ann Jordan, director of Global Rights' Initiative Against Trafficking in Persons, also points out that while "current federal law enables prosecutions of all enslavers and provides protection for all victims," the broad scope of the law "equates prostitution with trafficking, and is redirecting resources to end prostitution rather than to end trafficking." She suggests that the investigative and prosecutorial arms of the federal government are being diverted from their primary goals of eradicating all types of slavery, in order to pursue a war on prostitution."

This is something I have believed a long time. If we apply it to the case of the Filipina women who have been stopped from working in Japan, not only is there no evidence that they were prostitutes, even if they had all been prostitutes there is no evidence that they were forced into it. "If no one is forcing her to engage is such an activity, then trafficking does not exist." This is what one group of NGOs said in 1999, according to Bales.

This is the clearest case that we're not just talking about the desires of men here, we are also talking about the needs of women. The need for poor women to earn money. Having said that, it must be true that a few of these women might have chosen prostitution while in Japan. A few might even have intended to engage in prostitution before they applied for a visa to Japan.

Modern Slavery is not a good book about the subject. A much better book is The Truth about Modern Slavery by Emily Kenway.

It was John Miller of the American State Department who put pressure on the Japanese government to severely restrict entertainment visas. I have written about him here.