In light of International Women’s Month and an expansion in the conversation of who should be considered when trying to protect women, this article considers sex workers’ rights as women’s rights. It does this from two increasingly common perspectives. The first is of (forced) prostitution as a form of Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG). The second is of sex work as a form of women’s liberation. The article then considers whether these two streams of thought can be reconciled and calls for the promotion and protection of sex workers’ rights as women’s rights.

PROSTITUTION AS A FORM OF VAWG

Many consider prostitution to be inherently harmful, brutal, and damaging to an individual mentally, financially, emotionally, and physically. This damage can derive from the extreme nature in which a woman or girl is forced into prostitution, for example, as a consequence of trafficking. 

Amnesty International has also reported that sex workers are at risk of several human rights abuses, including: rape, violence, trafficking, extortion, harassment, discrimination, and seclusion. Indeed, the Femicide Census found that, between 2009 and 2015, of 936 women killed by men, 21 women were involved in prostitution and 13 were killed by buyers. Prostitution is therefore often perceived as not only a factor contributing to further exploitation of women, but as a form of VAWG in and of itself.

DECRIMINALISATION OF SEX WORK

The criminalisation of “adult, voluntary and consensual sex,” whether commercial or not, is considered incompatible with the rights to personal autonomy and privacy. According to Human Rights Watch, “[governments] should not [tell] consenting adults who they can have sexual relations with and on what terms”.

Additionally Amnesty International has noted that “criminalisation makes sex workers less safe, by preventing them from securing police protection and by providing impunity to abusers”.

Decriminalisation will enable women to work in a setting where there are protections which otherwise would be unavailable, such as access to healthcare, protection for sex workers’ families, and the confidence to come forward and report crimes to the police which might otherwise have resulted in action against them for selling sex.

There are multiple proposed models of decriminalisation. The Committee on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women 1979 (CEDAW) identified four existing legal models: (1) complete prohibition, (2) partial decriminalisation, (3) social control legislation, and (4) pro-work approaches. The most common proposed model is the “Nordic model,” which contemplates the criminalisation of buying sex as opposed to of selling sex. This model, however, is considered too weak to be effective because it has not had its intended effect. There has been less of a reduction in the demand of sex work and more of reduction in the money that sex workers have been able to make. As a result, Human Rights Watch has called for full decriminalisation.

RECONCILING TWO STREAMS OF THOUGHTS: SEX WORKERS’ RIGHTS AS EXISTING RIGHTS

Women’s rights and sex workers’ rights are two ideas that clearly overlap and, indeed, clash and conflict with each other. On the other hand, it is clear that promotion of the first (advocacy against forced prostitution as a form of VAWG) necessitates and even facilitates protection from the latter (from exploitation and human rights abuses).

For the purposes of this article, the following distinction will be used to present the differences and possible reconciliation between the two distinct feminist streams on the issue. On the one hand, “sex work” can include non-forced prostitution, video and phone sex, strip clubs, and other sexually-related services. It includes all aspects of consensual adult sex, which is “sex work that does not involve coercion, exploitation, or abuse”. On the other hand, “(forced) prostitution” is generally considered to be the male-organised selling of women’s bodies to men.

Addressing these two streams of sex workers’ rights requires many existing areas of women-centred human rights protection to be extended with this consideration in mind, including, for example, protection from trafficking and exploitation, protection from female violence and femicide, protection of female health and safety, and women’s equality in education and work. Additionally, properly addressing sex workers’ rights will help the fight against homophobia, transphobia, racism, and classism given the intersectional nature of sex work. It is also important to note that we must support the self-determination and recognition of sex work as work in order to further sex workers’ rights and, thus, women’s rights.

Whether you consider sex work itself as a violation of women’s rights, or its criminalisation a suppression of women’s rights, the world needs to pay more attention to the protection of women sex workers.

Maria is an LLM Human Rights graduate from Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. She is a volunteer for multiple human rights-focused organisations, a locum support worker and an aspiring barrister.