The Health and Well‑being of Sex Workers in Decriminalised Contexts: A Scoping Review (original) (raw)
Related papers
2021
Decriminalisation recognises sex work as work; it provides opportunities for promoting the health of sex workers and therefore goes a long way to addressing health and human rights inequities for this sector of the population. This chapter focuses on three scenarios (among many) where decriminalisation of sex work in New Zealand has been successful in promoting sex workers’ health, safety, and wellbeing and, in so doing, provides a blueprint for best practice in working with sex workers.Although services for sex workers are available in many countries, they tend to focus on street-based sex workers, who are perceived as the most vulnerable and thus most in need. A decriminalised context provides greater access to peer support (Harcourt 2010), which is much better positioned to address the complex needs of all sex workers. It also allows for sex workers to engage with others in the community for more effective policy as well as service provision (O’Neill and Pitcher, Sex work matters...
Decriminalising sex work in the UK
BMJ, 2016
Cutting support services will jeopardise health benefits of proposed decriminalisation Pippa Grenfell research fellow in public health sociology 1 , Janet Eastham sex worker activist 2 ,
Sex workers' utilisation of health services in a decriminalised environment
The New Zealand medical journal, 2014
In 2003 the Prostitution Reform Act (PRA) was passed in New Zealand which decriminalised all activities associated with sex work. To explore sex workers' utilisation of health services in New Zealand following decriminalisation of sex work and disclosure of their occupation to health professionals. A cross-sectional survey was carried out with 772 sex workers and in-depth interviews were carried out with 58 sex workers in New Zealand. Most sex workers have regular sexual health check-ups and most access their general practitioner (GP) for both general health needs (91.8%) and sexual health needs (41.3%). A quarter of the participants accessed a local sexual health centre for their sexual health needs and just over 15% accessed New Zealand Prostitutes' Collective's (NZPC's) Sexual Health Clinic. Little change was found in disclosure of occupation to health professionals following decriminalisation. Sex workers remain concerned about disclosing their occupation because...
Understanding the health and social wellbeing needs of sex workers in Victoria
This study sought to understand the health and social wellbeing needs of sex workers in Victoria to identify best practice for policy and service provision. It did so by means of qualitative interviews with 31 diverse sex workers and 17 key stakeholders, including service providers and peer community leaders. The report highlights how the health and wellbeing needs of sex workers in Victoria can be shaped by the experience of stigma, criminalisation, and a lack of safe, high-quality services. However, the health of our sex worker participants was also shaped by good sexual health knowledge, commitment to safer sex practices, strong peer support networks and resilience in the face of adversity. The report presents strong evidence that having sex work criminalised and regulated by police (including under a licensing system) is harmful to sex workers’ health and wellbeing. The fear of being prosecuted or stigmatised by disclosing their sex work creates barriers to accessing and engaging with health services. In case of violence and assault, the majority of sex worker participants would not seek help by police. Sex work decriminalisation was greeted by our study participants as the best way to start addressing the stigma and barriers to health and protection faced by diverse sex workers. To achieve this goal, our recommendations point at the need to fully repeal the criminalisation of street-based sex workers previewed by the Sex Work Decriminalisation Bill 2021. Service provision to sex workers should, on the other hand, be restructured to maximise the influence of peer-only services.
Harm Reduction and Decriminalization of Sex Work: Introduction to the Special Section
Sexuality Research & Social Policy, 2021
Introduction: This special section of Sexuality Research and Social Policy, edited by Belinda Brooks-Gordon, Max Morris and Teela Sanders, has its origins in a colloquium sponsored by the University of Cambridge Socio-Legal Group in 2020. The goal was to promote the exchange of ideas between a variety of disciplinary research fields and applied perspectives on harm reduction and the decriminalization of sex work. The colloquium took place during the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic in February 2020. Methods: We explore the impact of Covid-19 on understandings of sex work, outline the basic underpinning legal philosophical question, explore the intersectional politics of decriminalization, summarize contemporary international health and human rights campaigns, explore contemporary public opinion trends on the issue, and illustrate the universal principles. Finally, we summarize the special section papers (N=12). Results: The Covid pandemic provided a lens through which to analyse the changes that have occurred in sex work and sex work research in the past decade and it also exacerbated intersecting inequalities, accelerated many social shifts already in motion whilst changing the course of others. In combination the papers in this special issue examine sex work policy and research across 12 countries in four continents to provide and important space for international and cross-cultural comparison. Conclusions: We present the timely contributions of diverse authors and comment on the significance of their research projects which support a decriminalization policy agenda for the benefit of academics, policymakers and practitioners to improve public health strategies and international responses. Policy Implications: The research here amplifies the focus on harm reduction and strengthens the case for public policy that decriminalizes commercial sex between consenting adults as the best strategy to reduce harm.
Sex Work, Sex Workers and Forms of Inequality: A Policy Brief
HAPSc Policy Briefs Series, 2023
Sex work has always been here. It has many types and expressions. According to existing scholarship, sex work is associated with a variety of inequalities. Evidence from academic literature shows that, worldwide, sex workers face serious inequalities with severe effects on their lives. Through this policy brief, inequalities are classified by context in some main categories. Social, economic, racial/ethnic, gender, age and “beauty” as well as health inequalities, as demonstrated by international literature, plague sex workers at a global scale. Taking all the above into account, conclusions are drawn and possible solutions are recommended for the mitigation and -if possible- elimination of these inequalities, utilizing means at a local, national and international scale.
Taking the crime out of sex workNew Zealand sex workers' fight for decriminalisation
2010
When I lived in Montreal in the 1990s, a friendly young Mexican came to live in my shared flat for a summer-with a couple of her friends. All were in Canada on tourist visas, all looked for work under the table, just for that long hot summer. While the men quickly found work in the building trade, the young communications studies student found a dependable income in the Montreal sex industry. The men worked for $2 an hour, she worked for tips in a topless bar-which sometimes amounted to more, sometimes to less, than what her companions earned. The illegal work sector is heavily gender segregated. And the two work sectors are differently policed. Whereas the building sector is under state supervision because of suspicion of tax and social insurance evasion-the workers thus being regarded as offenders, the sex work sector has long been policed by vice squads: prostitution has long been deemed morally damaging, to the sex worker, to the community as a whole, and sometimes also to the customers, victims of womanly wiles. But the sex worker has also been construed as a potential victim, of "white slavery" or its modern equivalent, of "trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation". In the course of our research on trafficking, we often came across police officers who recounted their struggle to distinguish between sex workers illicitly working in Germany from the victims of trafficking. Victims of trafficking, they would ex plain, are not forthcoming about their situation, and indeed, how should they tell?
A study of the support needs of sex workers across Norfolk, UK
2015
Because everyone that works out there, yeah you know, ninety five percent of the people don't want to work out there (On-street sex worker) CHAPTER 1: AN OVERVIEW This report provides an overview of the needs of sex workers in Norfolk. It adds to pervious research which established a need for countywide services to be available (Gummerson, 2012) and extends our knowledge by including the views of sex workers as well as professionals who support sex workers. The aims of the research were to explore, as far as is possible with such a hidden population, the extent of sex working across Norfolk in order to identify where services should be focused. Additionally to examine, with sex workers, their experiences and their perspectives on the support they have received and the support they would like to receive in order to determine what support services need to be provided across the county. Although prevalence in the UK is unclear, sex work and sexual exploitation exists in most towns and cities (Home Office, 2004). Historically society's view that 'they' are 'unlike us' has determined how sexually exploited children and young people and adult sex workers have been perceived, treated and perceived themselves. Involvement in sex work is a pathway mainly negotiated through physical and emotional risks and the risk of the stigma of public condemnation. Due to its hidden nature, the numbers of people involved in selling sex in the UK can only be estimated (Home Office, 2006). What is clear is that those involved are a largely 'stigmatised marginalised and criminalised group' (Shaw & Butler, 1998, p.190). Legal and moral responses are often based on contradictory perspectives of those involved as 'sad' or 'bad', 'victim' or 'criminal', not on an understanding of the structural disadvantages affecting many who become involved in selling sex, nor on childhood experiences of adversity and maltreatment which impact on identity and choice (Dodsworth, 2012; Sanders, 2005). Sex workers' narratives indicate a complex picture, in which there is a differing balance of agency and victimhood throughout their life pathways, from the impact of childhood experiences to the experiences, relationships and wider structural factors impacting on them as adults. Taking too polarised a position by, for example, only seeing those involved as victims, risks denying the possibility of self-determination to such a degree that women's voices are ignored or silenced in the debate about effective ways forward. 1 The UK Network of Sex Work Projects (UKNSWP) is a voluntary sector umbrella group for organisations working in the field. Members include groups led by sex workers themselves, children's charities, organisations managed by health authorities, HIV and sexual health-services, and agencies with a religious ethos.