Criminalizing either demand or supply or both of prostitution won't do, just as criminalizing either demand or supply or both of labor of illegal immigrants won't do.
The sex sector is a big sector, accounting for "anywhere from 2 to 14 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and the revenues it generates are crucial to the livelihoods and earnings potential of millions of workers beyond the prostitutes themselves," so nothing short of social revolution would make a dent in it:
<blockquote>Major employment and revenue generator
The report says that although the exact number of working prostitutes in these countries is impossible to calculate due to the illegal or clandestine nature of the work, anywhere between 0.25 per cent and 1.5 per cent of the total female population are engaged in prostitution.
Estimates made in 1993-4 suggest that there were between 140,000 to 230,000 prostitutes in Indonesia. In Malaysia, the estimated figures for working prostitutes range from 43,000 to 142,000, but the higher figure is more probable, according to the ILO analysis. In the Philippines, estimates range from 100,000 to 600,000, but the likelihood is that there are nearly half a million prostitutes in the country. In Thailand, the Ministry of Public Health survey recorded 65,000 prostitutes in 1997, but unofficial sources put the figure between 200,000 and 300,000. There are also tens of thousands of Thai and Filipino prostitutes working in other countries. The prostitutes are mainly women, but there are also male, transvestite and child prostitutes.
Including the owners, managers, pimps and other employees of the sex establishments, the related entertainment industry and some segments of the tourism industry, the number of workers earning a living directly or indirectly from prostitution would be several millions. A 1997 study by the Ministry of Public Health of Thailand found that of a total of 104,262 workers in some 7,759 establishments where sexual services could be obtained, only 64,886 were sex workers; the rest were support staff including cleaners, waitresses, cashiers, parking valets and security guards.
A Malaysian study lists occupations with links to the sex sector as medical practitioners (who provide regular health checks for the prostitutes), operators of food stalls in the vicinity of sex establishments, vendors of cigarettes and liquor, and property owners who rent premises to providers of sexual services. In the Philippines, establishments known to be involved in the sex sector include special tourist agencies, escort services, hotel room service, saunas and health clinics, casas or brothels, bars, beer gardens, cocktail lounges, cabarets and special clubs.
The sex sector in the four countries is estimated to account for anywhere from 2 to 14 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and the revenues it generates are crucial to the livelihoods and earnings potential of millions of workers beyond the prostitutes themselves. Government authorities also collect substantial revenues in areas where prostitution thrives, illegally from bribes and corruption, but legally from licensing fees and taxes on the many hotels, bars, restaurants and game rooms that flourish in its wake.
In Thailand, for example, close to US$300 million is transferred annually to rural families by women working in the sex sector in urban areas, a sum that in most cases exceeds the budgets of government-funded development programmes. For the 1993-95 period, the estimate was that prostitution yielded an annual income of between US$22.5 billion and US $27 billion.
In Indonesia the financial turnover of the sex sector is estimated at US$1.2 billion to US$3.3 billion per year, or between 0.8 and 2.4 per cent of the countrys GDP, with much of prostitutes earnings remitted from the urban brothel complexes they work in to the villages their families live in. In the Jakarta area alone, there is an estimated annual turnover of US$91 million from activities related to the sale of sex.
Economic incentives drive the industry
While many current studies highlight the tragic stories of individual prostitutes, especially of women and children deceived or coerced into the practice, the ILO survey points out that many workers entered for pragmatic reasons and with a general sense of awareness of the choice they were making. About one-half of Malaysian prostitutes interviewed for the study said it was "friends who showed the way to earn money easily", a pattern that is replicated in the other study countries.
Sex work is usually better paid than most of the options available to young, often uneducated women, in spite of the stigma and danger attached to the work. In all four of the countries studied, sex work provided significantly higher earnings than other forms of unskilled labour.
In many cases, sex work is often the only viable alternative for women in communities coping with poverty, unemployment, failed marriages and family obligations, in the nearly complete absence of social welfare programmes. For single mothers with children, it is often a more flexible, remunerative and less time-consuming option than factory or service work.
Surveys within sex establishments reveal that while a significant proportion of sex workers claimed they wanted to leave the occupation if they could, many expressed concern about the earnings they risked losing if they changed jobs.
Even so, the surveys also reveal that in the experience of most of the women surveyed, prostitution is one of the most alienating forms of labour. Over 50 per cent of the women surveyed in Philippine massage parlours said they carried out their work "with a heavy heart", and 20 per cent said they were "conscience stricken because they still considered sex with customers a sin". Interviews with Philippine bar girls revealed that more than half of them felt "nothing" when they had sex with a client; the remainder said the transactions saddened them.
Surveys of women working as masseuses indicated that 34 per cent of them explained their choice of work as necessary to support poor parents, 8 per cent to support siblings and 28 per cent to support husbands or boyfriends. More than 20 per cent said the job was well paid, but only 2 per cent said it was easy work and only 2 per cent claimed to enjoy the work. Over a third reported that they had been subjected to violence or harassment, most commonly from the police but also from city officials and gangsters.
A survey among workers in massage parlours and brothels in Thailand revealed that "most of the women entered the sex industry for economic reasons." Brothel workers were more likely to say that they became prostitutes to earn money to support their children, while massage parlour women were often motivated by the opportunity to earn a high income to support their parents. Almost all of those surveyed stated that they knew the type of work they would be doing before taking up the job. Almost one-half of the brothel workers and one-quarter of the massage parlour workers had previously worked in agriculture. A further 17 per cent of the masseuses said they had previously worked in home or cottage industries and 11 per cent had been domestic servants.
The rationale, in Thailand and elsewhere, was that in exchange for engaging in an occupation which is disapproved of by most of society and which carries known health risks, "the workers expected to obtain an income greater than they could earn in other occupations". In nearly all segments of the sex trade, that expectation was fulfilled, and remittances from the women working in the sex industry provide many rural families with a relatively high standard of living. The earnings of Thai sex workers varied widely according to the sector and the number of transactions engaged in, but surveys showed a mean income per month of US$800 for all women, with a mean of US$1,400 for massage parlour workers and US$240 for women in brothels.
Studies of prostitution in Indonesia consistently show relatively high earnings compared with other occupations in which women with low levels of education are likely to find work. The personal incomes of high-range sex workers in large cities (for example call girls working in high-priced discos and nightclubs) can be as high as US$2,500 per month, a level which far exceeds the earnings of middle-level civil servants and other occupations requiring a high level of education. Average monthly earnings in the middle range of the sector were estimated at around US$600 monthly and US$100 at the low end (when the exchange rate was US$1= 2,000 rupiahs).
In contrast, the earnings and working conditions are miserably low at the bottom end of the market; sexual transactions in cheap brothels can be as low as US$1.50 and prices on the streets of slums or alongside market areas and railroad tracks are even lower, with comparatively higher risks in terms of personal safety and exposure to sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS.
In Malaysia, earnings in the sex sector are higher relative to earnings in other types of unskilled employment. In manufacturing, for instance, average wages per annum in 1990 were US$2,852 for skilled workers and US$1,711 per annum for unskilled workers. In comparison, a part-time sex worker in the cheapest of hotels who received US$4 per client, seeing about ten clients daily and working only once a week for about 12 hours, earned US$2,080 per annum.
One such sex worker explained "I can earn enough to look after my two young children. It is so difficult to get someone to look after them when you work elsewhere. Here I only come when I need the money and it is easy to find a babysitter for just one day."
All four country studies point out, however, that the information was gathered from establishments and individual prostitutes willing to be surveyed. The picture is incomplete for those establishments, especially brothels, which virtually enslave the workers and of those women and children who are the victims of serious exploitation and abuse. * * * * *
* The Sex Sector: The economic and social bases of prostitution in Southeast Asia edited by Lin Lean Lim, International Labour Office, Geneva, 1998. ISBN 92-2-109522-3. Price: 35 Swiss francs.
("The Economics of Sex," WORLD OF WORK 26, September/October 1998, <http://www.ilo.org/public/english/bureau/inf/magazine/26/sex.htm>)</blockquote> -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>