Sex Workers' Rights

The issue of sex workers' rights came into relevancy by the 1980s. Within the framework of the contemporary women's movement, some prostitutes, in connection with feminist activists and academics, started to reflect on their situation. This generated a new discourse that overturned the conventional view of prostitution, which then was reconceptualized as sex work.

The first important uprising took place in France by the mid-1970s, where more than 100 prostitutes locked themselves in a church demanding the right to work as street prostitutes without fear of fines and prison. The 1980s saw the birth of local movements all over the world—in Europe, Latin America, Southeast Asia, the United States, and Australia—and organizing at an international level. An example was the International Committee for Prostitutes Rights, born in Europe. Paradoxically, AIDS increased the stigmatization of sex workers but also brought funding for their own organizations and support groups because of the new conception of sex workers as health agents and sexual educators working to stop the spread of the disease.

In the 1990s, the increase in travel on a global scale, and in particular as migrants from poor to wealthy countries and, inversely, for sexual tourism from the wealthy to the poor countries, the development of new technologies of transport and communication—in particular the Internet, and the consolidation of a consumer society, among other globalization phenomena—created a boom in the sex industry, with countries and even world regions (for instance, Southeast Asia) depending on it for their economic survival. The new situation favored a new consciousness, created new problems, and also called for new public policies. Issues of migration, traffic, and rights moved to the center of debate.

From the perspective of sex workers' rights, prostitution is considered a very biased notion, given all its negative connotations, an inaccurate description of reality; sex industry seems to better cover and describe the multiplication and diversification of a huge business. Sex work is redefined in terms of an exchange of money and/or presents for sexual services, provided mostly, but not exclusively, by women to mostly, but not exclusively, men. Sex workers act as subjects who speak for themselves. They see themselves as second-class citizens, with fewer rights than the rest of citizens, and for that reason subject to all sorts of abuses: they are the target of social stigma and legal discrimination. Different gender norms and models of sexuality for men and women contribute to the understanding of sexual services as a right for men whereas women are criminalized for offering them.

Sex work is subjected to a double standard: on the one hand, it provokes a broad rejection and on the other hand, it is widely tolerated and spread. This is reflected in the laws. Legally speaking, three models have traditionally been used to address this issue: prohibitionist, regulamentarist, and abolitionist. All three adopt a moralistic approach, and likewise, in all three the party most legally repressed is always the woman—or the transvestite and transsexual—scarcely those who profit from the sex industry, the so called “third parties,” and almost never the client.

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