prostitution as a social problem essay

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9.4 Prostitution

Learning objectives.

• Summarize the history of prostitution in the United States.
• List the reasons that lead many people to dislike prostitution.
• Explain the problems that streetwalkers experience and why these problems occur.

Prostitution , the selling of sexual services, is yet another controversial sexual behavior. Many people, and especially those with conservative, religious views, believe prostitution is immoral because it involves sex for money, and they consider prostitution a sign of society’s moral decay. Many feminists believe that prostitution is degrading to women and provides a context in which prostitutes are robbed, beaten, and/or raped. These two groups of people might agree on little else, but they both hold strong negative views about prostitution. Regardless of their other beliefs, many people also worry that prostitution spreads STDs. All these groups think prostitution should remain illegal, and they generally prefer stricter enforcement of laws against prostitution.

Other people also do not like prostitution, but they believe that the laws against prostitution do more harm than good. They think that legalizing prostitution would reduce the various harms prostitution causes, and they believe that views about the immorality of prostitution should not prevent our society from dealing more wisely with it than it does now.

This section presents a short history of prostitution before turning to the various types of prostitution, reasons for prostitution, and policy issues about how best to deal with this particular sexual behavior. Because most prostitution involves female prostitutes and male customers, our discussion will largely focus on this form.

History of Prostitution

Often called the world’s oldest profession, prostitution has been common since ancient times (Ringdal, 2004). In ancient Mesopotamia, priests had sex with prostitutes. Ancient Greece featured legal brothels (houses of prostitution) that serviced political leaders and common men alike. Prostitution was also common in ancient Rome, and in the Old Testament it was “accepted as a more or less necessary fact of life and it was more or less expected that many men would turn to prostitutes” (Bullough & Bullough, 1977, pp. 137–138). During the Middle Ages and through the nineteenth century, prostitution was tolerated as a necessary evil, as legal brothels operated in much of Europe and were an important source of tax revenue. As the dangers of venereal disease became known, some cities shut down their brothels, but other cities required regular medical exams of their brothels’ prostitutes.

Prostitution was also common in the United States through the nineteenth century (Bullough & Bullough, 1987). Poor women became prostitutes because it provided a source of income at a time when they had few other options for jobs. Some prostitutes worked for themselves on streets and in hotels and other establishments, and other prostitutes worked in legal brothels in many US cities. During the Civil War, prostitutes found many customers among the soldiers of the Union and the Confederacy; the term hooker for prostitute comes from their relations with soldiers commanded by Union general Joseph Hooker. After the Civil War, camps of prostitutes would set up at railroad construction sites. When the railroad workers would visit the camps at night, they hung their red signal lamps outside the prostitutes’ tents so they could be found if there was a railroad emergency. The term “red-light district” for a prostitution area originated in the red glow that resulted from this practice.

Many US cities had legal brothels into the early 1900s. Beginning in about 1910, however, religious groups and other parties increasingly spoke out about the immorality of prostitution, and in addition claimed that middle-class girls were increasingly becoming prostitutes. Their efforts succeeded in shutting down legal brothels nationwide. Some illegal brothels continued, and among their number was a San Francisco brothel run during the 1940s by a madam (brothel manager and/or owner) named Sally Stanford. Her clientele included many leading politicians and businessmen of San Francisco and nearby areas. Like other earlier brothels, Stanford’s brothel required regular medical exams of her employees to help prevent the spread of venereal diseases (Stanford, 1966). Despite or perhaps because of her fame from being a madam, Stanford was later elected mayor of Sausalito, a town across the bay from San Francisco.

Prostitution in the United States Today

Estimates of the number of prostitutes in the United States range widely between 70,000 and 500,000. Streetwalkers comprise about one-fifth of all prostitutes.

Eric Parker – Prostitute 3 am – CC BY-NC 2.0.

No one really knows how many prostitutes we now have. Prostitutes are not eager to be studied, and because their work is illegal, the federal government does not compile statistics on their numbers as it does for physicians, plumbers, teachers, and hundreds of other legal occupations. One well-analyzed estimate put the number of female prostitutes at 70,000 and further concluded that they engage in an average of 700 acts of prostitution with male customers annually, or almost 50 million acts of prostitution overall each year (Brewer et al., 2000). However, other estimates put the number of prostitutes as high as 500,000, with many of these prostitutes working part-time, whether or not they also work in a legal occupation (Clinard & Meier, 2011).

Regardless of the actual number, prostitution is very common. The GSS asks, “Thinking about the time since your 18 th birthday, have you ever had sex with a person you paid or who paid you for sex?” In 2010, 11.9 percent of men and 1.7 percent of women answered “yes” to this question. These figures translate to about 13.5 million men 18 and older who have engaged in prostitution, usually as the customer, and 2.1 million women.

In 2010, police and other law enforcement agents made almost 63,000 arrests for prostitution and commercialized vice (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2011). Most of these arrests were of prostitutes, but some were of customers. Women accounted for almost 69 percent of the arrests in this entire category.

Types of Prostitutes

Several types of prostitutes exist. At the bottom of the prostitution “hierarchy” are streetwalkers (also called street prostitutes ), who typically find their customers, or are found by their customers, somewhere on a street. They then have a quick act of sex in the customer’s car, in an alleyway or other secluded spot, or in a cheap hotel. Although streetwalkers are the subjects in most studies of prostitutes, they in fact compose only about one-fifth of all prostitutes (Weitzer, 2012).

The remaining 80 percent of prostitutes generally work indoors. Call girls work as independent operators in their homes or fairly fancy hotels and charge a lot of money for their services, which include sex but also talking and dining. Their clients are typically businessmen or other wealthy individuals. Many call girls earn between $200 and $500 per hour, and some earn between $1,000 and $6,000 per hour or per session (Weitzer, 2009). Escorts work for escort agencies, which often advertise heavily in phone books and on the Internet. They may operate out of an apartment rented by their agency or come to a client’s hotel room or other location. Although they may actually act as an escort to a dinner or show, typically their services include sexual acts. They, too, are generally well paid for their work, but do not earn nearly as much as call girls because they have to give at least 30 percent of their earnings to their agency.

Call girls and escorts rank at the top of the prostitution hierarchy (Weitzer, 2009). Below them, but above streetwalkers, are three other types of prostitutes. Brothel workers , as the name implies, are prostitutes who work in brothels. The only legal brothels in the United States today are found in several rural counties in Nevada, which legalized prostitution in these counties in 1971. Workers in these brothels pay income tax. Because their employers require regular health exams and condom use, the risk of sexually transmitted disease in Nevada’s brothels is low. Massage parlor workers , as their name also implies, work in massage parlors. Many massage parlors, of course, involve no prostitution at all, and are entirely legal. However, some massage parlors are in fact fronts for prostitution, where the prostitute masturbates a man and brings him to what is often termed a “happy ending.” A final category of prostitution involves prostitutes who work in bars, casinos, or similar establishments ( bar or casino workers ). They make contact with a customer in these settings and then have sex with them elsewhere.

The lives and welfare of streetwalkers are much worse than those of the five types of indoor workers just listed. As sociologist Ronald Weitzer (2012, p. 212) observes, “Many of the problems associated with ‘prostitution’ are actually concentrated in street prostitution and much less evident in the indoor sector.” In particular, many streetwalkers are exploited or abused by pimps, use heroin or other drugs, and are raped, robbed, and/or beaten by their clients. A good number of streetwalkers also began their prostitution careers as runaway teenagers and were abused as children.

In contrast, indoor workers begin their trade when they were older and are less likely to have been abused as children. Their working conditions are much better than those for streetwalkers, they are less likely to be addicted to drugs and to have STDs, they are better paid, and they are much less likely to be victimized by their clients. Studies that compare indoor prostitutes with nonprostitutes find that they have similar levels of self-esteem, physical health, and mental health. Many indoor prostitutes even report a rise in self-esteem after they begin their indoor work (Weitzer, 2012).

Explaining Prostitution

By definition, prostitution involves the selling of sex. This means that money is the key feature of prostitution. As such, money is also the major motivation for women who become prostitutes, as most of them come from low-income backgrounds. For indoor workers, and especially call girls, prostitution is a potentially well-paying occupation. Streetwalkers hardly get rich from prostitution and suffer the many problems listed earlier, but prostitution still provides them a source of income that they are unlikely to receive through legal occupations because they have few marketable job skills.

Despite this financial motivation, most women do not become prostitutes, and scholars have tried to understand why some women do so. Because prostitutes are not eager to be studied, as noted earlier, we do not yet have studies of random samples of prostitutes, and probably never will have such studies. As also noted earlier, most studies of prostitutes involve streetwalkers, even though they compose only about 20 percent of all prostitutes. Several of these studies cite high rates of child abuse in the backgrounds of streetwalkers, but other studies find that their rates of child abuse are similar to those of women from similar sociodemographic backgrounds who are not prostitutes (Weitzer, 2009). Although some studies find certain psychological problems among streetwalkers, it is unclear whether these problems existed before they became streetwalkers or developed (as is very possible) after they became streetwalkers. Methodologically, the best way to clarify this causal question would be to randomly assign young women to become prostitutes or not to become prostitutes, and then to study what happens to their psychological health afterward. For many reasons, this type of study would be highly unethical and will never be done. In the absence of studies of this type, it is difficult to determine what exactly prompts some women to become prostitutes.

Customers of prostitutes tend to come from the same kinds of social backgrounds as do noncustomers. They have certain motivations for wanting to be with a prostitute, but many noncustomers have the same motivations yet still do not pay for prostitution.

Wikimedia Commons – CC BY-SA 2.5.

There is an old saying that “it takes two to tango.” Prostitution obviously cannot occur unless a customer wants to pay for the services of a prostitute. Despite this essential fact of prostitution, there are very few studies of why men choose to become customers. The implicit message from this lack of studies is that it is normal for men to have sex with a prostitute but abnormal for women to charge these men for this sex. The few studies we do have do not find any substantial differences between customers and noncustomers (Weitzer, 2009). Just as men come from various social backgrounds, so do the men who choose to have sex with a prostitute.

Customers do have certain motivations for choosing to pay for prostitution (Weitzer, 2009). These motivations include (1) the desire to have sex with someone with a certain physical appearance (age, race, body type); (2) the lack of a sexual partner or dissatisfaction with a sexual partner, including a desire to have unconventional sex that the partner does not share; (3) the thrill of having sex with a prostitute; and (4) the desire to have sex without having to make an emotional commitment. Although one or more of these motivations may be necessary for a man’s decision to seek prostitution, they do not entirely explain this decision. For example, many men may not have a sexual partner or may be dissatisfied with a partner they do have, but they still do not decide to pay for a prostitute.

Sociological Perspectives

Beyond explaining why individual women and men are more likely than others to pay for sex or to receive pay for sex, the three sociological perspectives outlined in Chapter 1 “Understanding Social Problems” —functionalist theory, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism—offer more general insights on prostitution. Table 9.5 “Theory Snapshot” provides a summary of these insights.

Table 9.5 Theory Snapshot

According to functionalist theory , prostitution exists because it serves several important functions for society generally and for certain people in society. As we have already mentioned, it provides a source of income for many women who otherwise might be jobless, and it provides a sexual alternative for men with the motivations listed earlier. Almost eight decades ago, sociologist Kingsley Davis (1937) wrote that prostitution even lowers the divorce rate. He reasoned that many married men are unhappy with their sex life with their wives. If they do not think this situation can improve, some men start an affair with another woman and may fall in love with that woman, threatening these men’s marriages. Other men turn to a prostitute. Because prostitution is generally impersonal, these men do not fall in love with their prostitutes, and their marriages are not threatened. Without prostitution, then, more men would have affairs, and more divorces would result. Although Davis’s hypothesis is provocative, there are no adequate studies to test it.

According to conflict theory , prostitution reflects the economic inequality in society. Many poor women feel compelled to become prostitutes because of their lack of money; because wealthier women have many other sources of income, the idea of becoming a prostitute is something they never have to consider. Sad but interesting historical support for this view comes from an increase in prostitution in the second half of the nineteenth century. Many women lost husbands and boyfriends in the war and were left penniless. Lacking formal education and living in a society that at the time offered few job opportunities to women, many of these bereaved women were forced to turn to prostitution to feed their families and themselves. As American cities grew rapidly during the last decades of the nineteenth century, thousands of immigrant women and other poor women also turned to prostitution as a needed source of income (Rosen, 1983). This late nineteenth-century increase in prostitution, then, occurred because of women’s poverty.

According to the feminist version of conflict theory, prostitution results not only from women’s poverty but also from society’s patriarchal culture that still views men as the dominant figure in heterosexual relationships and that still treats women as “sex objects” who exist for men’s pleasure (Barry, 1996). In such a culture, it is no surprise and even inevitable that men will want to pay for sex with a woman and that women will be willing to be paid for sex. In this feminist view, the oppression and exploitation that prostitution inherently involves reflects the more general oppression and exploitation of women in the larger society.

Symbolic interactionism moves away from these larger issues to examine the everyday understandings that prostitutes and their customers have about their behavior. These understandings help both prostitutes and customers justify their behavior. Many prostitutes, for example, believe they are performing an important service for the men who pay them. Indoor prostitutes are perhaps especially likely to feel they are helping their customers by providing them not only sex but also companionship (Weitzer, 2009). A woman who owned a massage parlor named “The Classic Touch” echoed this view. Her business employed fourteen women who masturbated their customers and offered a senior citizen discount. The owner reasoned that her employees were performing an important service: “We have many senior citizens and handicapped people. We have some men who are impotent and others who are divorced or in bad marriages. This is a safe, AIDS-free environment…that helps marriages. Husbands come in here and get a stress release and then they are able to go home and take on more. These are men who aren’t in bars picking up strange women” (Ordway, 1995, p. 1).

Dealing with Prostitution

With prostitution, past is once again prologue. It has existed since ancient times, and it has continued throughout the United States long since prostitution was banned by the United States in 1920. The legal brothels that now exist in rural counties in Nevada are the exception in this nation, not the rule. Yet prostitution is common outside of Nevada, and thousands of arrests occur nationwide for it.

As with illegal drugs (see Chapter 7 “Alcohol and Other Drugs” ), as we think about how to deal with prostitution, we should consider both a philosophical question and a social science question (Meier & Geis, 2007). The philosophical question is whether two people should be allowed to engage in a behavior, in this case prostitution, in which both want to participate. Many people may dislike this behavior for various reasons, but is that sufficient justification for the behavior to be banned if both people (let’s assume they are legal adults) want to engage in it? In this regard, and without at all meaning to equate prostitution with same-sex sexual behavior, an analogy with homosexuality is worth considering. Homosexual sex used to be illegal because many people thought it was immoral. When the US Supreme Court finally invalidated all laws against homosexual sex in its 2003 case, Lawrence v. Texas , the majority opinion declared that “the fact that a State’s governing majority has traditionally viewed a particular practice as immoral is not a sufficient reason for upholding a law prohibiting the practice.” It further asserted, “The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives. The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime. Their right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government.” Although the majority opinion specifically said its decision did not apply to prostitution, a reasonable argument may be made that respect for privacy of consensual sexual conduct also means that prostitution, too, should be legal.

Here it may be argued that prostitution still victimizes and objectifies women even if they want to engage in it. This is a reasonable argument, but there are many occupations that victimize employees, either because the occupations are dangerous (such as coal mining and construction work) or because the job requirements objectify women as sex objects (such as fashion modeling and cheerleading). Because hardly anyone would say these occupations should be illegal, is it logical to say that prostitution should be illegal? Former US Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders thinks it makes no sense to ban prostitution simply because it objectifies women: “Why are we so upset about sex workers selling sexual acts to consenting adults?” she asks. “We say that they are selling their bodies, but how different is that from what athletes do? They’re selling their bodies. Models? They’re selling their bodies. Actors? They’re selling their bodies” (McCaslin, 1999, p. A8).

The social science question concerning laws against prostitution is whether these laws do more good than harm, or more harm than good. If they do more good than harm, they should be maintained and even strengthened; if they do more harm than good, they should be repealed. A growing number of scholars believe that the laws against prostitution do more harm than good, and they say that the best way to deal with prostitution might be to legalize and regulate it (Weitzer, 2011).

Proponents of legalization argue as follows. Although many people cite the horrible lives of many streetwalkers as a major reason for their support of laws against prostitution, these laws ironically cause the problems that streetwalkers experience (Weitzer, 2011). When US prostitution was legal a century ago in brothels across the nation, brothel prostitutes were safer than streetwalkers are now. Prostitutes working today in Nevada’s legal brothels are safer than streetwalkers. Whatever we might think of their behavior, legal brothel workers are relatively safe from being robbed, beaten, or raped, and their required regular medical exams leave them relatively free of sexually transmitted disease. The health problems and criminal victimization that many streetwalkers experience happen because their behavior is illegal, and legalizing and regulating prostitution would reduce these problems (Weitzer, 2011).

In this regard, legalization of prostitution is yet another harm reduction approach to a social problem. As Weitzer (2012, p. 227) observes, “Research suggests that, under the right conditions, legal prostitution can be organized in a way that increases workers’ health, safety, and job satisfaction. Mandatory condom use and other safe-sex practices are typical in legal brothels, and the workers face much lower risk of abuse from customers.”

Legalization of prostitution would also yield a considerable amount of tax revenue, as is now true in Nevada. Let’s assume that 50 million acts of prostitution occur annually in the United States, to cite our earlier estimate that is probably too low, and that each of these acts costs an average $30. Putting these numbers together, prostitutes receive $1.5 billion annually in income. If they paid about one-third of this amount (admittedly a rough estimate) in payroll taxes, the revenue of state and federal governments would increase by $500 million. Because the tens of thousands of arrests for prostitution and commercialized vice annually would reduce significantly if prostitution were legalized, the considerable financial savings from this reduction could be used for other pursuits.

Legalizing prostitution would add the United States to the lengthy list of other Western democracies that have already legalized it. Although their models of legalization vary, the available evidence indicates that legalizing prostitution does, in fact, reduce the many problems now associated with illegal prostitution (see Note 9.25 “Lessons from Other Societies” ).

Workers in legal brothels are relatively safe from victimization by customers and from the risk of incurring and transmitting sexual diseases.

Wikimedia Commons – public domain.

Lessons from Other Societies

Legal Brothels in Other Western Democracies

In many other Western democracies, prostitution is legal to varying degrees that depend on the specific nation. In some nations, streetwalking is permitted, but in other nations, only brothels are permitted.

The legal brothel model is what the United States had a century ago and has today only in rural Nevada. As in Nevada, other nations that permit legal brothels usually require regular health exams and the use of condoms to prevent the transmission of sexual diseases. They also license the brothels so that the brothels must fulfill various standards, including the safe-sex practices just mentioned, to receive a license. In addition, brothels must pay taxes on their revenues, and brothel workers must pay taxes on their incomes.

As in rural Nevada, brothel workers in these other nations are unlikely to be abused by their customers. A major reason for their relative safety is that they work indoors and that any abuse by customers might be heard or witnessed by someone else inside the brothel. In addition, brothels in many nations have implemented certain measures to ensure workers’ safety, including the provision of panic buttons, the use of listening devices, and screening of customers when they enter the brothel.

A report by the Ministry of Justice in the Netherlands, where legal brothels operate, has concluded that most brothel workers say that they feel safe. A government report in New Zealand, which legalized prostitution in 2003, concluded that legalization made it more likely that prostitutes report any problems to the police and also increased their self-esteem because their behavior was now legal. A government commission in Australia that evaluated legal brothels in the northeastern state of Queensland concluded, “There is no doubt that licensed brothels provide the safest working environment for sex workers in Queensland…Legal brothels now powering in Queensland provide a sustainable model for a healthy, crime-free, and safe legal licensed brothel industry.”

Assessing all these nations’ experiences, sociologist Ronald Weitzer concluded that “legal prostitution, while no panacea, is not inherently dangerous and can be structured to minimize risks and empower workers.” The United States, then, has much to learn from the other Western democracies that have legalized prostitution.

Sources: Weitzer, 2009, 2012

Key Takeaways

• Prostitution has existed since ancient times and continues to be common today around the world. The United States had legal brothels before 1920, and legal brothels are found today in rural counties in Nevada.
• Many people oppose prostitution because they feel it is immoral or because they feel it degrades and victimizes women. Because prostitution usually involves consensual behavior, some scholars say it should not be illegal in a society that values a right to privacy.
• Some scholars also say that laws against prostitution do more harm than good and in particular account for the various problems that streetwalkers experience.

For Your Review

• Do you think prostitution should become legal and regulated? Why or why not?
• The major difference between prostitution and sex resulting from a casual pickup involves whether money is exchanged. Write an essay in which you first take the “pro” side on the following debate question, and then take the “con” side: that prostitution is worse than sex from a casual pickup.

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Social Problems Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Prostitution, payment for the exchange of sexual services, is deemed a major social problem in most countries around the world today, with little to no consensus on how to address it. In this Target Article, we unpack what we discern as the two primary positions that undergird academic thinking about the relationship between inequality and prostitution: (1) prostitution is principally an institution of hierarchal gender relations that legitimizes the sexual exploitation of women by men, and (2) prostitution is a form of exploited labor where multiple forms of social inequality (including class, gender, and race) intersect in neoliberal capitalist societies. Our main aims are to: (a) examine the key claims and empirical evidence available to support or refute each perspective; (b) outline the policy responses associated with each perspective; and (c) evaluate which responses have been the most effective in reducing social exclusion of sex workers in societal institutions and everyday practices. While the overall trend globally has been to accept the first perspective on the “prostitution problem” and enact repressive policies that aim to protect prostituted women, punish male buyers, and marginalize the sex sector, we argue that the strongest empirical evidence is for adoption of the second perspective that aims to develop integrative policies that reduce the intersecting social inequalities sex workers face in their struggle to make a living and be included as equals. We conclude with a call for more robust empirical studies that use strategic comparisons of the sex sector within and across regions and between sex work and other precarious occupations.

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Benoit, C., Smith, M., Jansson, M. et al. “The Prostitution Problem”: Claims, Evidence, and Policy Outcomes. Arch Sex Behav 48 , 1905–1923 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-018-1276-6

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Received : 22 January 2018

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Issue Date : October 2019

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-018-1276-6

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Physical and mental health consequences, social stigma and discrimination, perpetuation of gender inequality.

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6 Ideas and Practices of Prostitution Around the World

Magaly Rodríguez García is a Lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Leuven.

• Published: 07 July 2016
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This essay provides a global overview of prostitution from the early modern period to the present. Although the distinction between “premodern” and “modern” prostitution is not necessarily sharp, the profound political, military, and socioeconomic changes from roughly 1600 onward had an important impact on the sale of sex. Worldwide, the practice of prostitution and societal reactions to it were influenced by processes of colonization, industrialization, urbanization, the rise of nation-states, military modernization, nationalism, and war, as well as revolutions in politics, agriculture, transport, and communication. A long historical and broad geographical perspective reveals the continuities and discontinuities in the way commercial sex was practiced, perceived, and policed. This essay paper approaches prostitution from a double (top-down and bottom-up) perspective that integrates criminology and labor theory, presenting the views of authorities, anti-vice campaigners, and society at large while situating prostitution as an integral part of labor history.

Introduction

This essay provides a global overview of prostitution from the early modern period to the present. The focus on female prostitution in urban settings is justified by the fact that commercial sex has nearly always been a city-based phenomenon involving women servicing men. Although the distinction between “premodern” and “modern” prostitution is not necessarily sharp, the profound political, military, and socioeconomic changes that occurred from around 1600 onward had an important impact on the sale of sex. Worldwide, the practice of prostitution and the societal reactions to it were influenced by processes of colonization, industrialization, urbanization, the rise of nation-states, military modernization, nationalism, and war, as well as by revolutions in the realms of politics, agriculture, transportation, and communication.

A long historical and broad geographical perspective permits us to observe the continuities and discontinuities in the way commercial sex was practiced, perceived, and policed. The necessities that accompanied nationalist and imperialist projects from the late eighteenth century onward had a profoundly negative impact on the understanding of prostitution but did not really alter the motivations of women to engage in the sex trade. Evidence derived from classic works on prostitution and studies collected for the project “Selling Sex in the City” 1 proves that while the efforts of authorities to control, repress, or prohibit prostitution crescendoed, more diverse and inventive methods of carrying out the trade were developed by the men and women involved in it. Similarly, the growing involvement of non-state actors in debates on prostitution—particularly whether to condemn it or to redefine it as sex work—led to the development of alternative ways to sell sex and to an increased vocalization of the workers concerned.

This contribution approaches prostitution from a double (top-down and bottom-up) perspective that integrates criminology and labor theory. On the one hand, it presents the point of view of authorities, antivice campaigners, and society at large. As these groups perceived prostitution in terms of sin, deviancy, crime, or victimhood, their responses to commercial sex variously attempted to control, conceal, or repress it. On the other hand, this essay studies prostitution as an integral part of labor history. If we follow Marcel van der Linden’s “very simple definition,” of work as “the purposive production of useful objects or services” ( van der Linden 2011 , p. 27), then prostitution can be defined as work. The trade’s structure and working conditions are therefore included in this analysis. Furthermore, analyses focusing on the women’s profiles and motivations for prostitution are integrated in the narrative, as they are considered essential for a more comprehensive understanding of this type of work. In so doing, this essay attempts to contribute to contemporary debates and to warn against the dangerous generalizations, myths, and gendered misconceptions that often emerge whenever prostitution (and migration for prostitution) is discussed. In particular, the popular image of young females forced into the prostitution milieu by malevolent (male) traffickers calls for a more nuanced analysis.

The essay unfolds in five sections. Section I discusses the legal and cultural definitions of prostitution across time and space. In section II , I examine the societal reactions toward prostitution and de facto or legal regimes governing commercial sex, including tolerance, regulation, abolition, and prohibition. Related to these themes is the real or imaginary link made between prostitution, deviancy, and crime, which constitutes the focus of section III . The spatial organization of the trade and the working conditions of women engaged in it are described in section IV . The final section examines the demography and causes of prostitution. 2

I. Definitions

The online Cambridge Dictionary defines prostitution as “the work of a prostitute,” and the latter as “a person who has sex with someone for money.” 3 Although commonly accepted, these definitions do not permit identification of the immense range of remunerated sex activities that exists. Moreover, if taken literally, these definitions can include practices that have most often been accepted as mainstream and very different from prostitution. Marriages or other forms of intimate relationships, for example, have often involved sexual exchanges for livelihood, but society—except for radical feminists—has never linked them to commercial sex. Perhaps the metaphoric definition of prostitution provided by the online Oxford Dictionary will give us a clearer clue to its symbolic meaning across time and space: here, prostitution is “the unworthy or corrupt use of one’s talents for personal or financial gain” (emphasis mine). 4 Indeed, it is the moral or status connotation attached to it, and not so much the exchange of sexual favors for money or in-kind goods or services, that has characterized the understanding of prostitution in most societies.

In Europe and the Americas, common prostitutes were identified with marginality and were arrested under regulations against “disorderly people,” lewdness, and vagrancy until the first half of the twentieth century (Rosen 1982; Svänstrom 2006 ). Slave or pawned prostitutes in American colonies or from African and Asian countries belonged to the lowest rank of society. On the other end of the spectrum, some early forms of prostitution were linked to high prestige and were characterized by a range of entertainment services much broader than pure sexual intercourse. But although commercial sex was legal and regulated in several places in Renaissance Europe and precolonial Asia, high-level courtesans refused to be identified as prostitutes. Furthermore, early regulations always included more than the exchange of sex for money ( Gronewold 2013 ). Premarital sex, adultery, or “indiscriminate availability” ( Karras 1996 , p. 17) were encompassed in the more commonly used term “whoredom.” In Europe and the Americas, a clear distinction between “whores,” “harlots,” “mistresses,” and “prostitutes” was nonexistent. From the mid-eighteenth century onward the terms “prostitution” and “prostitute” became more widely used to differentiate them from fornication and adulterous women, respectively ( Nuñez & Fuentes 2013 ; Laite 2011 ).

The reinstallation of systems of regulation in the nineteenth century required a clearer categorization of prostitution. Henceforth, the monetary transaction became central to the legal definition of prostitution. Sexual barter, however, has remained difficult to categorize. During the twentieth century, the so-called “charity girls” in the United States exchanged sex for entertainment expenses but made a clear distinction between their acts and prostitution, which they considered immoral. The figure of the “cocotte” in Paris and Berlin at the turn of the century also defied easy categorization. In some African and Asian cities, too, sexual bartering for material goods or privileges seems to have been—and to still be—common. As in Europe, the identification of “real” prostitutes was problematic in colonies or countries that had introduced regulation systems in their territories. Often, any suspect woman was registered as a prostitute and exposed to intrusive medical examinations ( Clement 2005 ; Guigon 2012 ; Smith 2013 ; Ekpootu 2013 ).

Colonization brought a radical shift to the conceptualization of prostitution. Women who in precolonial periods had provided more spiritual than sexual services (e.g., temple dancing girls in India and courtesans in China, Japan, and other parts of Asia) became automatically identified as prostitutes by European colonists. In places like Australia or New Zealand, European colonization laid the foundations for prostitution, and although little is known about the sexual practices of precolonial populations in Africa and the Americas, it is clear that prostitution as we know it today took off after the European conquest ( Absi 2013 ; Frances 2011 ; Frances 2007 ; Lauro 2005 ; Levine 2003 ; White 1990 ).

The terms “prostitution” and “prostitute” were commonly used by officialdom during the twentieth century, but more insulting words like “whore” and its foreign equivalents were and still are popular in common parlance. However, with the development of the prostitutes’ rights movement from the 1970s onward, the pejorative names came under attack. A restructuring of the trade’s language took place in which prostitution came to be defined as “sex work.” The new usage of the terms “sex work” and “sex worker” was an important semantic shift that signified the strengthening of a movement that understands prostitution in terms of labor and human rights ( Bindman 1997 ; Delacoste & Alexander 1988 ; Pheterson 1989 ). For their part, radical feminists are virulently against the idea of prostitution as sex work. Instead, they define prostitution as “sexual slavery” and prefer to speak of “prostituted woman” rather than “prostitute” or, worse still, “sex worker,” as the former term “brings the perpetrator into the picture” ( Jeffreys 1997 , p. 5; Barry 1979 ; Barry 1995 ).

II. Societal Reaction and Legal Situation

The definition of prostitution and societal reactions to it have had an important impact on the legal regimes that have aimed to control, repress, or regulate the sale of sex. Nearly everywhere, and during much of the period studied here, legal and cultural attitudes toward prostitution have overlapped. Although some forms of high-level prostitution in earlier times commanded respect and prestige, most societies have despised it ( Stearns 2009 ). Most cultures have at one time or another tolerated or regulated prostitution, but more often than not non-elite prostitutes have been perceived as low status or outcasts. The view of prostitution as “an evil”—a necessary one for some and an unwarranted one for others—seems to be ubiquitous. During most of Chinese history, prostitution was legal and monitored by the imperial or local state. Within a highly patriarchal society, commercial sex was recognized as an occupation, but one that was meant to protect “good” women from those who provided social companionship and sexual services to men ( Gronewold 2013 ). For hundreds of years in precolonial India, common prostitutes formed part of the mainstream labor population but were perceived as “sinners.” Furthermore, the caste-based, hierarchical society accorded them a low social status, placing them just above sweepers ( Frances 2011 ). In medieval Europe, too, the municipal authorities of most large cities (with the exception of London) regulated prostitution and accepted prostitutes because they supposedly served as outlets for male sexual drives and protected “honest” women from rape ( Karras 1996 ; Perry 1990 ; Trexler 1981 ). In cities of the United States, prostitution was quietly tolerated during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but whorehouse riots and violence against prostitutes were common (Rosen 1982).

Cultural, politico-military and socioeconomic changes from the late fifteenth century onward altered the perception of prostitution and, above all, the government responses to it. Parallel to the religious revival of the time, an increased number of unregulated prostitutes became visible. As the early modern state and its large military apparatus developed, independent prostitutes started to follow the armies. The new situation led to a spread of venereal diseases, to which authorities reacted with the adoption of ordinances prohibiting prostitution and confining women in hospitals or prisons. Religious societies became increasingly involved in campaigns against prostitution and in rehabilitation programs for “fallen women.” During much of the seventeenth and part of the eighteenth centuries, prostitution was linked to sin ( Conner 2013 ; Nuñez & Fuentes 2013 ).

But the negative effects of agricultural disruptions, urbanization, and industrialization on the working population led once again to a fairly tolerant attitude toward prostitutes. Parallel to the language of sin, a view of prostitution as a social or pathological condition became increasingly popular. And, as uncontrolled sexuality and sexually transmitted diseases became a constant preoccupation of bourgeois society ( Foucault 1976 ), more and more persons called for the regulation of prostitution. Embryonic forms of regulation appeared in the late 1700s in Berlin and Paris. By the early 1800s, Napoleon had installed a regulatory system that included the licensing of brothels, registration of prostitutes, and compulsory health examinations. In the 1830s, the sanitary engineer Alexandre Jean-Baptiste Parent-Duchâtelet developed a comprehensive and virtually carceral system of regulation consisting of legal and regulated brothels, hospitals, prisons, and reformatories. Known as the “French system,” regulation itself spread to cities around the world over the course of the nineteenth century ( Bliss 2001 ; Corbin 1990 ; Guy 1991 ; Schaepdrijver 1986 ). Moreover, amid a period of nationalist fervor, political considerations motivated authorities to regulate the sex trade in many places. State control of brothels and medical examination of prostitutes were seen as ways to protect citizens, the military, the family, and the nation from political threats, disease, and homosexuality ( Bernstein 1995 ; Gilfoyle 1999 ; Guy 1991 ). Among large cities, London and New York remained exceptions, as they never implemented the modern regulatory system. Yet there, too, prostitution was tolerated and informally regulated. Prostitution as such was not illegal, but women could be arrested under laws against “nightwalking,” soliciting, public disorder, or vagrancy ( Gilfoyle 1992 ; Laite 2011 ; Walkowitz 1980 ). In Rio de Janeiro, an extralegal form of regulation, in which the police possess a strong authority but lack a specific legal mandate to control and organize the sex trade, has characterized the history of prostitution ( Blanchette & Schettini 2013 ).

In the colonies, the expansion of prostitution posed a serious threat to the imperial project. Interracial sex and prostitution of white women could undermine colonial power and prestige, while the spread of venereal disease could cripple colonial administrators and troops. The Contagious Diseases Acts of the 1860s were not meant to regulate prostitution in all British cities, but, as legal instruments designed to protect the empire’s army, were confined to ports and garrison towns and therefore never applied to London ( Levine 2003 ). They created a great controversy, not only because any woman suspected of being a prostitute had to undergo a compulsory genital inspection, but also because they targeted women only. Although men were equally responsible for the spread of diseases, the blame fell on women only. Of the case studies of the “Selling Sex in the City” project, Nigeria was the only country where males (soldiers) were the target of measures against venereal disease. Hence the issue generated an intense debate in Britain on the double standards governing men and women ( Walkowitz 1980 ). But generally, the various forms of regulation that were introduced in the colonies were tougher than the system adopted in England. Colonial legislation of prostitution applied to the whole territory, was more invasive in women’s lives, and was tougher on poorer and nonwhite prostitutes. Regulationist countries like Belgium, France, and the Netherlands also introduced strict methods of control in their colonies. And, while some U.S. states experimented briefly with regulation, moving toward a more muscular repression of brothel prostitution, the Americans in the Philippines took over the official system of regulation that the prior colonial authorities had introduced in the last years of Spanish rule ( Corbin 1990 ; Frances 2011 ; Howell 2004 ; Lauro 2005 ).

But increasingly, public opinion turned against the official regulation of prostitution. As the number of unregistered prostitutes grew and the failure of the regulation system to control the spread of venereal disease became apparent from the 1850s onward, an abolitionist movement became stronger. Abolitionism, the movement to eliminate state-regulated prostitution, appeared for the first time in Great Britain under the leadership of Josephine Butler. Opponents of regulation viewed this form of state control of women not only as morally unacceptable but also as inefficient, because clandestine prostitutes and male clients were not part of the system. Vigorous antiregulation campaigns resulted in the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts in England in 1886 and in the annulment of various regulation laws in British colonies in the late 1880s. Yet in several colonies, the authorities refused to repeal their legislation or opted for an unofficial continuation of the regulation system. As in the mother country, regulation in French colonies went undisturbed until deep in the twentieth century (Corbin 1900; Levine 2003 ).

From the end of the nineteenth century onward, a frontal attack on regulation of prostitution and, above all, the obvious failure of the system led to the passage of municipal and national laws against brothel keeping, procuring, and soliciting, as well as stringent migration legislation in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. The First and Second World Wars saw a brief revival of regulation of prostitution, but soon after both 1919 and 1945, abolition became more widespread. In countries such as Argentina, China, Japan, and the Soviet Union, abolition or the outright prohibition of prostitution was associated with the construction of a modern twentieth-century state. Latecomers in the official abolition of regulation were Belgium, Japan, Mexico, and the preeminent regulationist country, France, which criminalized brothel keeping in 1946 and procuring, pimping, soliciting, and organized prostitution in 1960 ( Conner 2013 ; Gilfoyle 1999 ; Hershatter 1997 ). In abolitionist countries, prostitution itself is not illegal but the activities surrounding it are. There, prostitutes are not criminalized, but because activities that facilitate the trade are included in the penal code, they become immersed in a criminal circuit.

By the latter part of the twentieth century, calls for the recognition of prostitution as sex work had led to liberalization in countries like Germany, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. In Istanbul, too, where the system of regulation existed for most of the twentieth century, prostitution is today legal and regulated. Since the nineteenth century, however, the trend in most countries has been toward a strong moral condemnation of the sex trade. Worldwide, the number of countries where prostitution is outlawed, or where prostitution is legal but procuring and soliciting are not, is much larger than the number of countries that do not criminalize prostitution or activities related to it ( Country Report on Human Rights Practices 2008 ). Yet, in spite of the official position, municipal authorities of many abolitionist countries tolerate and regulate prostitution under public order or hospitality industry laws. This reflects the ambiguity surrounding prostitution, which leaves the persons active in the sector in a legal limbo.

III. Prostitution, Deviancy, and Crime

To varying degrees, the last two centuries have been characterized by a strong identification of prostitution with deviancy and crime. Until the late 1700s, some forms of social disorder like prostitution were accepted as sinful but inevitable or even vital behavior, as they would prevent worse evils. Advocates of regulation of prostitution followed this Augustinian logic. 5 However, the nineteenth-century system of regulation, with its enclosed brothels, compulsory registration, harsh medical treatment, confinement to specialized hospitals for the treatment of venereal diseases, 6 or imprisonment for clandestine prostitutes, handled women not as sinners or fallen women, but as quasi-criminals.

Writing in a period during which public transgressions were perceived as potential threats to the social order and as a problem that called for intervention ( Lee 2013 ), the ideas of Cesare Lombroso, the Italian founder of positivist criminology, reinforced the perception of prostitutes as deviants and offenders. In spite of the contemporary criticism of the scientific validity of his theory of the atavistic, born, or genetic criminal, Lombroso’s book La donna delinquente, la prostituta e la donna normale (1893) 7 continued to influence interpretations of female crime until deep in the twentieth century; some of its ideas are still discernable in some contemporary representations of prostitutes. Lombroso and his co-author, Guglielmo Ferrero, were convinced that lawbreakers constituted a throwback to a more primitive form of human being, who could be distinguished from “normal” persons by physical imperfections and abnormalities, the so-called stigmata of degeneration. They classified women into three groups: criminals, prostitutes, and normal. Generally, they found that all women were less evolved than men but stressed that female criminals and prostitutes were more anomalous than “honest women and even lunatics” ( Lombroso & Ferrero 2004 , p. 112; Rafter & Gibson 2004 ). If prostitutes did not show as many anomalies as other criminals, it was because their youth and use of makeup helped them to minimize their degenerative characteristics.

Since Lombroso and his positivist colleagues focused on the physiological traits of criminals, they understood crime as a disease, not as a rational individual choice. Although offenders could not be held responsible for their acts, society had the right to protect itself from them. Incurable born criminals and innate prostitutes were to be incarcerated or locked up in brothels, but occasional offenders were viewed as having the capacity for reform, and, because born female criminals were in Lombroso’s view rare, he proposed alternatives to prison for most female offenders. Furthermore, he distinguished between “born” and “occasional” prostitutes. The former resembled both female and male criminals. Moral insanity characterized the innate prostitute, as well as a lack of maternal and family feelings, aggressive or masculine behavior, a passion for liquor, unrestrained greed, a lack of decency, sexual frigidity, laziness, a passion for dancing, and a propensity for lying. These women were considered “mildly criminalistic” ( Lombroso & Ferrero 2004 , p. 216) but as rarely committing serious crimes because of their physical weakness or intellectual backwardness. Theft and blackmail were the most common offenses among them. Hence Lombroso and Ferrero concluded that, “in women, criminality generally takes the form of prostitution.” Occasional prostitutes showed less degenerative traits but remained “notably abnormal” (pp. 221–22). They were pushed into prostitution by external factors such as early loss of virginity, coercion, poverty, or bad examples.

During the first part of the twentieth century, more sophisticated theories on female crime and prostitution became increasingly popular. Contrary to Lombroso, they embraced psychological and social-structural factors but still relied on implicit assumptions about the “distinct” nature of women ( Klein 1973 ). The concept of “feeble-mindedness” entered the debate as a major cause of prostitution. Whereas Lombrosian practitioners set out to measure cranial and other physical traits of presumed criminals, antivice authorities and reformers who relied on psychiatrists’ and eugenecists’ theories subjected women accused of prostitution to mental tests and humiliating examinations (Rosen 1982). Long and impertinent questioning on their family background, education level, sexual life, habits, and employment history sought to distinguish “normal” from sexually “deviant” women. Even international organizations such as the League of Nations viewed social profiling as a useful tool to obtain indications as to the best methods of rehabilitation ( Rodríguez García 2012 ). Indeed, many persons concerned with the issue of prostitution did not believe in punishment but called instead for rehabilitative and preventive measures that sought in extreme cases to suppress the number of prostitutes through sterilization, or, more often, to control minds through socialization ( Klein 1973 ).

However, benevolent societies provided rehabilitation programs that women often experienced as being similar to or worse than prison terms. In colonial Mexico, so-called Recogimientos (seclusion institutions) attempted to safeguard women from sinful life but turned into virtual prisons for those (suspected of) practicing prostitution. Although Magdalen Homes had already existed in thirteenth-century Europe, asylums aimed at reform and control of women’s sexuality spread after the mid-1700s in England, Ireland, Scotland, and the United States. Magdalen Homes’ methods for the reform of prostitutes and other “fallen women” were penitence, hard work, and prayer. The importance of laundry work was emphasized, as it was seen as symbolizing the spiritual cleansing of the inmates. In early twentieth-century American cities, women accused of prostitution were not jailed but were put on probation or sent to reformatories or workhouses. Many women preferred fines or prison sentences in order to avoid officers’ scrutiny during probation. French feminist Avril de Sainte-Croix was a fervent defender of rehabilitation institutions. During a meeting of the Committee of Social Questions of the League of Nations, she reported that in one of the institutions in which she was active, successful rehabilitation of young women had been achieved through “skillful administration of drugs,” which “very speedily brought calm to their souls and bodies.” 8 In general, rehabilitation was not attractive to women because life in a reformatory meant entrapment in programs in which they were trained in feminine “domesticity” and taught low-paid occupations such as sewing, embroidery, scrubbing, spinning, and cooking. What made reformatories even worse was the fact that the individual reform at which they aimed was not sentence-based, meaning that women could be detained for years instead of days or months in a prison ( Nuñez & Fuentes 2013 ; Rosen 1982).

Ultimately, those who focused on the consequences rather than the causes of prostitution prevailed in the United States. During the so-called Progressive era (ca. 1890s–1920s) reformers became increasingly preoccupied with all kinds of “social evils” and their link to politicians and policemen. Like drug consumption or gambling, prostitution came to be viewed as a victimless crime, but one that could harm society through moral degeneration, public disorder, corruption, delinquency, violence, and venereal disease ( Weitzer 2010 ). After many failed attempts to repress prostitution, authorities opted for a frontal attack. A few weeks after the American entrance into the First World War, the Commission on Training Camp Activities was created to repress prostitution and liquor sales among troops; in 1917, the Chamberlain-Kahn Act created a Division of Venereal Diseases; and in 1918, President Wilson established an Interdepartmental Social Hygiene Board. In 1919, the latter communicated to the Appropriations Committee of the House of Representatives that the board had helped to close down more than a hundred red-light districts near military camps and had incarcerated 30,000 women and girls. Whereas the international armed conflict came to an end, the federal, state, and municipal authorities continued to pursue their war against commercial sex. Prostitution has been outlawed in the United States since the Standard Vice Repression Act of 1919, after which every state enacted laws prohibiting prostitution ( Clement 2006 ). Only some counties of the state of Nevada have legalized brothels since the 1970s, with most of them today isolated in rural areas.

Socialist revolution in various countries also led to the (de facto) criminalization of prostitution. In the Soviet Union, for example, prostitution was perceived as a symbol of capitalism and gender inequality. Instead of reintroducing criminal measures or medical supervision of women, the Bolsheviks tried to rehabilitate and educate former prostitutes. But the labor camps that were installed for this purpose became punitive institutions against women. Former prostitutes were regarded as “social parasites” harmful to society, and many were shot in the 1930s under Stalin ( Alexopoulos 2003 ). Also in China after 1949, the Maoist regime sought to completely eradicate prostitution and the sale and use of opium, which were seen as the ultimate symbols of capitalist vice. Prostitution was harshly punished until 1958, when it was (wrongly) considered totally eradicated ( Hershatter 1997 ).

Yet a perception of prostitutes as outright criminals has never been prevalent among the public. The idea of the fallen woman was used to refer not only to sinful or unruly behavior for which she was responsible, but also to situations of vulnerability in which women fell prey to malevolent men. Starting in the second half of the nineteenth century, women involved in prostitution became increasingly perceived as victims. In Great Britain, feminists and libertarians helped to publicize a series of sexual scandals in the 1880s, which ended with the reporting of Jack the Ripper and the murder of five prostitutes. W. T. Stead’s newspaper publication on the abduction of English girls sold to continental brothels, as well as the media attention given to the Ripper murders rendered all men suspect and strengthened the notions of urban danger and female fragility ( Walkowitz 1982 ). The link between (migration for) prostitution, male violence, and traffic was established then; by the late 1890s, a movement for the suppression of “white slave traffic” had emerged in Britain and spread internationally. From the early twentieth century onward, national and international initiatives to curtail the traffic in prostitution mushroomed 9 ( Limoncelli 2010 ; Rodríguez García 2012 ), in spite of the fact that empirical evidence of widespread trafficking or appropriate tools to measure it are lacking ( Knepper 2013 ).

The idea of prostitution as a harmful activity in which women are the main victims has become increasingly influential since the last decades of the twentieth century. As at the turn of the century, supporters of this interpretation of prostitution are of the opinion that commercial sex fuels human trafficking. In the United States, feminists have called into question the notion of prostitution as a victimless crime. Since they view prostitution as a “blatant example of the sexual oppression of women” ( Bennetts & Carlton 1973 , p. 137), they demand the decriminalization 10 of prostitutes as a short-term solution and the radical transformation of the socioeconomic structure of society to eliminate prostitution in the long run. In Sweden, a similar logic but a different approach has been applied. Focusing on the demand side of prostitution, Swedish feminists called for the criminalization of clients. After a long debate, the purchase of sex became illegal in Sweden in 1999 ( Svänstrom 2004 ). Prostitution is thus viewed as a crime, but one committed by men upon women—strengthening the idea of male clients as predators. With some variations, the so-called Swedish model spread to several European countries. In February 2014, the European Parliament approved a nonbinding resolution that recommends that EU countries reevaluate their sex work policies in order to reduce the demand for prostitution and trafficking by punishing the clients. Since commercial sex is seen as inherently exploitative and as a violation of human rights, supporters of the Swedish model make no distinction between voluntary and forced prostitution. In their view, most women involved in prostitution are forced into the trade by third parties and/or poverty. As the following sections will illustrate, the structure of the trade, its working conditions, and the motivations of women involved in it are more complex than that described by pure harm-based analyses of prostitution.

IV. Trade Structure and Working Conditions

The structure of the sex trade and the working conditions within it are influenced by governmental and societal attitudes toward prostitution, as well as by the (extra-) legal, market, technological, and medical forces that govern female labor in general. Gender segmentation in the labor market in most places during much of the period studied here resulted in a general marginalization of women and led many into full-time or casual prostitution. During the early modern period, brothel and street prostitution were the most common forms of the trade. Brothels entrapped women in a system of financial exploitation, and often physically in enclosed buildings and segregated zones, but they also protected prostitutes from aggressive clients or police extortion. Although women had to divide their earnings with madams, 11 income from prostitution was always higher than in other branches of the economy. Furthermore, women often developed strategies to increase their revenues. In colonial Casablanca, for instance, prostitutes were not allowed to leave the walled brothel district (Bousbir) without permission, but when permitted to go out, they sometimes used their free time to engage in clandestine encounters in other parts of the city ( Kozma 2013 ).

Registered women bore the stigma of prostitution but had more opportunities to use official institutions (e.g., courts) than did independent prostitutes or other females who had to rely on men to have access to public services. In Cairo, state-run brothels did not exist until the late nineteenth century, but prostitutes were taxed, had access to the courts, and were allowed to participate in guild processions—albeit at the end of the parade ( Hammad & Biancani 2013 ). Other benefits of brothel prostitution were the familiar environment and the relative comfort for women who had no ties with kin and friends because of either death, family ruptures, or the ostracism that derived from involvement in the sex trade ( Clement 2006 ; Nuñez & Fuentes 2013 ). Many women scorned the mandatory health controls and treatment of the regulated brothels of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but they sometimes used the system for their own purposes. While some used the health checkups to solve problems other than venereal disease, others asked medical staff for help when they wished to get out of prostitution ( Absi 2013 ; Frances 2013 ).

The stigma attached to registered prostitutes, as well as accumulated debts or (induced) drug addictions, often impeded women from leaving the bordellos, but their working conditions were also dependent on their position within society. Legal systems that allowed for the sale and pawning of women, such as those in existence in China, India, Japan, Singapore, and Turkey, often led to dire working conditions, as women had little control over the number and kind of clients they received, or the services they were to provide. But young women could also be sold to luxurious brothels or wealthy men. In these cases, services were provided in sumptuous surroundings and in much better conditions, but always at the cost of personal freedom ( Henriot 2001 ; Hershatter 1997 ; Tong 1994 ; White 1990 ).

New spaces and working conditions developed with the politico-military, socioeconomic, and cultural transformations from the 1600s onward. Women wanting to avoid the strict municipal or unofficial brothel rules increasingly opted for independent prostitution. With the development of large armies, independent prostitutes moved to garrison towns to provide soldiers with their services. With the further growth of the entertainment and hospitality industry starting in the nineteenth century, many prostitutes began to work in cafés, restaurants, taverns, massage parlors, theaters, saloons, hotels, and speakeasies, or took their clients to their own rooms and apartments. Until the mid-1950s, London prostitution was primarily street-based. Everywhere, self-employed prostitutes were often better placed than their counterparts in brothels to negotiate their working conditions with clients and the owners of the establishments where they practiced their trade. Also, when working in secrecy, they avoided stigmatization. Yet women working outside the official or de facto regulated system always risked punishment or extortion from authorities. In such cases, the involvement of third parties to help women escape police harassment, provide money for bail or lawyers, and to attract trustworthy clients often became necessary ( Clement 2006 ; Gilfoyle 1992 ; Laite 2011 ).

A particularly interesting case of independent prostitution that developed in colonial times was that of Nairobi. Malaya prostitutes rented rooms and waited discreetly for men to purchase access from the house owner. This method allowed women to avoid arrest and societal condemnation, but with the disadvantage that they could not choose their clients. Like elite courtesans in China or the geishas of Japan, malaya women offered much more than sexual services (conversation, food, baths, cleaning, etc.); they claimed that their work mimicked marriage. In economic terms, malaya prostitution was a form of long-term investment—not a survival strategy, but a way to accumulate capital and to prosper independently. In contrast, wazi-wazi women solicited from the windows, doors, or porches of the houses where they rented a room. They had much more control over the clients that came in and the time they spent with them. Contrary to the malaya prostitutes, wazi-wazi women provided brief encounters and usually sexual services only. Most of them worked only temporarily in prostitution. Typically, they were daughters helping their parents to reestablish themselves in smallholdings or in trade. Finally, watembezi were streetwalkers or prostitutes soliciting in public places like bars or hotel lobbies. They cherished their independence to choose clients and determine the labor time, and mocked malaya prostitutes for their passivity and marriage-like practices. Their profits were used for family support and not so much for independent accumulation, as in the case of malaya women. Like streetwalkers in other parts of the world, watembezi developed strong ties, shared rooms, and helped each other in difficult times ( White 1990 ).

Luise White’s (1990) study of prostitution in Nairobi helps us to rethink the assumptions and myths that often surround prostitution, like strict hierarchies and limited room for agency. In such hierarchies, elite courtesans in Asia, malaya prostitutes in Nairobi, or high-class escorts and call girls are typically placed at the top, with other indoor and outdoor prostitutes being assigned a lower status. However, freedom and the capacity to control working conditions was (and is) in all cases relative and dependent on the locations where and the types of clients with whom women worked. With a much larger pool of middle- or low-class clients, outdoor prostitutes were able to pick and choose. Past and present elite prostitutes, self-employed or not, are in the position to entertain clients in luxurious surroundings and to live in considerably more comfortable circumstances than regular ones, but they probably have less control over the services they provide—ranging from working hours spent in nonsexual entertainment to the provision of extreme sexual favors. A high-class prostitute dependent on a few wealthy men may be less inclined to refuse certain demands than a common prostitute who provides fast and unceremonious intercourse or only manual or oral sex to ten, fifteen, or twenty customers a day ( Laite 2011 ). Whereas upper-class prostitutes are expected to follow patriarchal rules and protocol, common prostitutes often reverse the gender roles. Ethnographic research in Bolivian brothels shows the ways in which men there are humiliated by prostitutes, with clients being robbed or induced to spend more than they have in food and drinks, thereby reversing the traditional roles by making clients indebted to women. By making fun of men’s appearance or way of talking, prostitutes make sure that clients do not view them as submissive women willing to do anything for money ( Absi 2013 ).

The issue of violence and health in relation to prostitution also needs careful reevaluation, as there exists no reliable empirical evidence on the matter. Until the twentieth century, rates of venereal diseases were extremely difficult to determine. Whether prostitutes in the past suffered more from these diseases than other sexually active persons is unclear. Nowadays, HIV/AIDS has replaced syphilis and gonorrhea as the most dangerous sexually transmitted disease, but it remains unclear whether persons active in the sex industry get infected during sexual contacts at work or in private, or whether it is transmitted through intravenous drug use. Julia Laite’s (2013 , p. 15) conclusion with regard to the situation in London can be applied to other cases: “It remains difficult to separate the actual health experiences of prostitutes from their pathologization within criminal justice and social work systems”.

Generally, it has been assumed that prostitution leads to poor physical and psychological health, particularly among low-class prostitutes. The question is whether prostitutes suffer(ed) more than other workers engaged in substandard jobs, and whether brutal clients are (or were) the rule in the commercial sex exchange. Some contemporary case studies point to physical and mental problems as being the result of stigma and state repression, not an outcome of the sale of sex as such. Indeed, ego-documents and other sources containing firsthand accounts testify that prostitutes have been as (if not more) afraid of the police as customers’ or pimps’ violence. The paradox of state repression of prostitution is that it has never succeeded in abolishing the trade, but it has produced sufficient material evidence of the high incidence of official abuse and violence against prostitutes. Execution, drowning, mutilation, compulsory separation from children, flogging, forced sterilization, torture, and forced (sex) labor have occurred in places as varied as Turkey, colonial Egypt, France, England, Sweden, Austria, China, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union. Historical data also sustain the contention that streetwalkers were not necessarily more vulnerable to male violence than were indoor prostitutes ( Frances 2013 ; White 1990 ).

Official and unofficial abuse of prostitutes led to increased protests not only by feminists but also by the affected women. Although formal organizations appeared only in the second half of the twentieth century, prostitutes’ protests took place sporadically in the late 1800s and early 1900s in such places as India, Russia, and Argentina ( Bernstein 1995 ; Guy 1990; Levine 2003 ). With the development of the feminist movement, cultural changes, and new attitudes toward sex in the 1960s, prostitutes from different parts of the world became more vocal and started to organize themselves. The first well-known demonstration was organized by French prostitutes who occupied a church in Lyon in 1975 to protest police harassment and a lack of state protection. The initiative spread to the rest of France and inspired many other women worldwide. Factors that contributed to the militancy and mushrooming of sex workers’ organizations were increased travel opportunities and the growth of the Internet, which facilitated connections between women ( Janssen 2011 ).

Indeed, technological developments in communication and transport have had an important impact on the working spaces and conditions of prostitution. Just like the more widespread use of the telephone in the early twentieth century, the Internet and mobile phones have enabled women to engage in full-time or casual prostitution. These technologies have increased the independence and invisibility of prostitutes, but procurers and pimps have not become totally absent. In early twentieth-century New York, for example, the increased use of the telephone facilitated the operations of call girls and of male “bookies” who controlled, booked, and moved women and madams to different houses and flats on a weekly basis ( Clement 2006 ). Nowadays, too, the secrecy of sexual encounters can lead to unsafe situations. And, as in past venues for prostitution, websites for sexual commerce are often constructed on an ethnic basis. Racial segregation of red-light districts was institutionalized in many colonial settings, but an ethnic hierarchy was also common in many other cities of the world. The demand for certain types of women, as well as the socioeconomic factors that led to the further development of the sex industry, has contributed to increased female mobility and a more diversified prostitution population over the last centuries.

Although foreign migration of women was not an unknown phenomenon in the early modern period, the rate of interstate female migration increased with the development of the transport infrastructure from the late eighteenth century onward. Parallel to voluntary migration, a trade in women for prostitution also existed in African, Middle Eastern, and Asian cities ( van Voss 2012 ). This led to a more marked presence of foreign women in the worldwide sex trade, and to the conflation of migration for prostitution and white slavery or human trafficking. But the rates of foreign prostitution are uncertain. Moreover, the demography and causes of prostitution have always been more complex than the narrative of foreign or rural women being forced into the sex trade.

V. Demography and Causes of Prostitution

Estimates of the number of women active in prostitution, as well as data on their backgrounds, are problematic. To nineteenth-century urban observers, prostitution appeared to be a growing problem, although this assertion cannot always be proven. In colonial cities, it is clear that the number of prostitutes increased along with the development of new economic activities and the huge male labor migration that supported them. Women became heavily affected by the breakdown of traditional means of survival and social norms. Because the new urban economies offered few labor opportunities for women, and as human relations became increasingly commodified and commercialized, women turned in large numbers to the sex trade ( Frances 2011 ; van Voss 2012 ).

In noncolonial cities where prostitution had existed for a long time, it is much more difficult to establish the extent to which the sex trade increased as a result of industrialization and urbanization. As Christine Stansell (1986 , p. 173) noticed for nineteenth-century New York, “there were more prostitutes simply because there were more people.” In other cities, too, the amount of prostitution is virtually impossible to establish because of the groups that were often included in (e.g., unmarried, “unchaste,” or “promiscuous” women) or excluded from (e.g., disguised or part-time prostitutes) the category of prostitution ( Clement 2006 ; Laite 2011 ).

For the same reasons, data on the nativity of prostitutes are inconclusive. Past and present reports, popular writings, and media stories often stress the share of foreign-born women in prostitution. Undoubtedly, large capital cities and hubs of international migration have always attracted foreign men and women to the sex trade, but because of its furtive nature, it is not possible to state with certainty how large the foreign population in prostitution was and is in relation to the local one. For instance, a 2009 TAMPEP report on the prostitution population in Europe states that most sex workers are (foreign) migrants. Yet, as its authors admit, these results “should not be considered as absolute ‘data’ or as entirely representative of the actual situation.” As in the past, the quantification of the sex industry and its workers remains extremely difficult, as clandestine or hidden prostitution is not reported, and many prostitutes successfully evade controls ( TAMPEP 2009 , pp. 8–9). Often, migrant prostitutes and women from minority groups become involved in the most visible forms of the sex trade, which possibly explains their overrepresentation in the statistics. This does not mean that the presence of foreign or minority women in prostitution was or is negligible. The available sources do confirm a strong presence among prostitutes of women (and men) of foreign origin or from ethnic minority groups. Particularly during the 1800s and early 1900s, and again from the late twentieth century onward, the growth of the global economy and increased labor migration propelled more women into interstate migration ( Henderson 1999 ; Laite 2011 ; Mechant 2013 ; van Voss 2012 ).

As well, racial discrimination in the labor market pushed many women into the sex trade. In colonial and many noncolonial cities, subordinate women only had access to a limited number of badly remunerated menial factory or domestic occupations. In New York City, for example, where the share of black women in the population was low (2 percent in 1910; 5 percent in 1930), they accounted for 13 percent of the detentions at the state reformatory for women at Bedford Hills in 1910, and for 54 percent of all arrests recorded in the Women’s Court in the second half of the 1930s ( Clement 2006 ; Gilfoyle 1992 ).

But not all racially, socially, or economically discriminated women turn(ed) to prostitution, so the question of what motivates women to become involved in the sex trade remains. Across time and space, prostitution has offered many economic and noneconomic advantages. Although it is impossible to compile and compare the different payments for prostitution in different societies in this study, it is clear that the sale of sex was (and in many cases still is) significantly more lucrative than most occupations available to women. The literature on the history of prostitution contains sufficient evidence of women who appear to have become engaged in the trade to ameliorate their personal living conditions. Many others seem in the first place to have had the maintenance of their underage, ill, or unemployed relatives in mind as a strong motivation to become and stay involved in prostitution. Everywhere, prostitution often formed part of the family economy. Hence, economic hardship is certainly discernable in most cases, and in several instances the fear of starvation or sheer want also appears. As Kingsley Davis (1937 , p. 149) argued, “prostitution embraces an economic relation, and is naturally concerned with the entire system of economic forces”.

Yet the economic motivation does not answer the question of why so many women with similar socioeconomic backgrounds did or do not become attracted to prostitution. The available literature evidences numerous noneconomic motivations for prostitution. A crucial one was the negative perception of conventional jobs available to women. Whereas domestic service, waitressing, peddling, or factory work were considered burdensome, discriminatory, tedious, and/or dangerous, prostitution was often linked to the idea of a more flexible and independent life. Contrary to what former authorities, doctors, social workers, antiprostitution reformers, or society at large often thought, prostitutes do not reveal any particular psychological or physical defect that makes them different from “normal” women ( Corbin 1990 ). Generally, they were not less educated than other working-class women, and although most prostitutes came from the (heterogeneous) laboring classes, not all of them were part of destitute families. Hence, “if there are any discernable patters,” Eileen McLeod affirms (1982, p. 31), they are “an independent stance” and the wish for “distance from family controls.” Case studies of cities as varied as Lagos, London, Moscow, Nairobi, Rio de Janeiro, and Shanghai provide evidence of thousands of women making use of the sex trade to evade the limitations of the patriarchal order and enter the consumption society independently.

Popular narratives of prostitution also tend to portray the sector as being overpopulated by young girls. Certainly the sex industry has always been dominated by the demand for young women, but empirical studies demonstrate that nearly everywhere the mean age of prostitutes has been between twenty and twenty-five. Child prostitution was already heavily debated in Victorian England by the end of the nineteenth century, but the available literature indicates that extremely young girls were very rare. Children in prostitution also seems to have been infrequent in cities like Amsterdam, New York, Perth, and Sydney ( Mechant 2013 ; Walkowitz 1980 ). 12

This does not mean that exploitative third parties and trafficking were merely the fantasy of moral antiprostitution crusaders. Many women, particularly those from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, were sold, pawned, or led by false promises of marriage or employment to brothels. Often, young women were sold to procurers by parents trying to escape starvation after the social turmoil and socioeconomic transformations of the colonial period. In many cases, however, women seem to have been aware of the situation and to have accepted this as a survival strategy for their families and themselves. Moreover, the traffic in Asian women between the 1850s and the 1950s seems to have been only supplementary to the much larger voluntary migration of seasoned prostitutes ( van Voss 2012 ).

Although an almighty white slave conspiracy and trade has never been satisfactorily proven, some evidence of forceful or deceptive recruitment for prostitution in Western cities does exist. Cases of coercion seem to have been infrequent and unconnected to the larger networks of intermediaries of prostitution throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Ruth Rosen (1982) estimates that during the first decades of the twentieth century, less than 10 percent of the whole prostitute population of the United States experienced situations that fell under the white slavery label. Findings of the studies collected for the “Selling Sex in the City” project also sustain the contention that cases of women being forced or tricked into prostitution existed but were rare. Most often, third parties did not constitute the main cause of prostitution, but they did play an important part in the recruitment of women and the organization of the trade. The more risky and secretive commercial sex became, the more important a role pimps and other intermediaries played in the management of prostitution from the late nineteenth century onward. As labor migration increased, a diverse range of intermediaries (e.g., procurers; madams; brothel keepers; escort agents; owners of theaters, massage parlours, barber shops, or apartments; and female relatives, friends, or acquaintances active in the sex trade) became involved in arranging the movement of females to overseas brothels or into other forms of prostitution. Their methods included smuggling; fictitious marriages; employment contracts; facilitation of boat, train, or plane tickets; and provision of forged documents ( Clement 2006 ).

The tripartite organization of prostitution seems to have been typical when or where women had (or have) not yet acquired sufficient political and socioeconomic power to work as independent prostitutes. Migratory impediments and labor restrictions, as well as stigma, marginalization, and violence, encourage the involvement of third parties. The available literature and source material for the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries provide evidence of pimps and procurers moving from city to city to secure recruits, but also of women actively looking for intermediaries to help them out with travel tickets, loans, documents, contacts with clients, and so on, a situation that turns the traditional view of recruiting for prostitution upside down ( Rodríguez García 2012 ; Ekpootu 2013 ). French police and emigration officials interviewed by members of a travel committee conducting an international inquiry on human trafficking for the League of Nations in the mid-1920s stated that recruitment often went in two directions. The recruitment of girls for prostitution was well known to the police of all countries and to the public in general, they said—but “what is not so well known is the influence which professional prostitutes have in the recruitment of souteneurs.” 13 Instances of female agency like this still need to be unveiled for a more comprehensive narrative on prostitution.

The study of prostitution in a long historical and broad geographical perspective permits us to understand commercial sex in terms of labor and to overturn the myths that often surround it. Among the commonalities that can be observed in the history of prostitution are the quasi-universal view of the trade as a substandard activity, a continuous effort by municipal (and later also state) authorities to control commercial sex, and a constant supply of women. Indeed, despite the stigma, thousands of women worldwide have viewed prostitution as a logical option compared to the other work alternatives available to them. Scientific studies that include the points of view of the persons concerned provide sufficient evidence of a large group of women entering prostitution voluntarily and experiencing the activities of the trade as less traumatic than generally assumed. In all the works consulted for this essay, prostitution is linked not only to higher wages but also to flexible hours; freedom from abusive employers or family members; liberation from conventional but monotonous, degrading, and exploitative jobs; and exciting experiences such as contact with persons from different classes or origins whom many women would otherwise never meet. Throughout time and space, prostitutes seem to have been as or more afraid of official repression than of violent clients or pimps. Admittedly, a lot of prostitution in different times and societies remained and remains hidden, but one can assume that independent sex work is easier to conceal than are forced activities involving one or more intermediaries.

Harsh measures to regulate prostitution in some cities and to eliminate it in others stimulated women to hide their activities, a situation that strengthened the involvement of exploitative third parties in the trade. The legalization experiments that have occurred in Germany and the Netherlands have not proven ideal (for reasons that go beyond the scope of this study), but have at least awakened the debate on the best way to provide protection to the persons involved in the sector ( Aronowitz 2014 ). The logic behind the legalization of the sex trade is that every (adult) person has the right to use his or her body and sexuality to make a living. Interestingly, the human rights approach is also used by advocates of the criminalization of clients. In their view, prostitution violates human dignity and human rights, regardless of whether it is forced or voluntary.

The contemporary debate demonstrates that neither the decline in religion nor the spread of secularism has changed societal attitudes toward prostitution. Even in countries where prostitution is legal, the main actors (prostitutes, clients, and intermediaries) continue to be stigmatized. According to Belgian sexologist Alexander Witpas, 14 the reason why the stigma around prostitution is so resilient is because sex—especially female sex—continues to be taboo, even in oversexualized societies. This helps to explain why so many prostitutes in past and present societies have opted to hide the nature of their work, and why misconceptions about prostitution often dictate public policy.

This project was organized by the author in cooperation with Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk (Wageningen University), Lex Heerma van Voss (Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands), and Marcel van der Linden (International Institute of Social History). A selection of papers has been compiled in an edited volume that will be published in 2016. See http://socialhistory.org/en/projects/selling-sex-city .

In this essay, I use the terms “prostitute” and “prostitution” instead of “sex work” and “sex worker,” as the latter encompass more than the exchange of sex for monetary or material compensation. The negative connotation attached to the former terms reflects the stigma that has characterized most of the history of prostitution and does not imply a judgmental interpretation of it on the part of the author.

For the definition of “prostitution,” see http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/prostitution?q=prostitution ; for “prostitute,” see http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/prostitute_1?q=prostitute .

See http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/prostitution .

The fourth-century Christian theologian Augustine of Hippo once wrote: “Suppress prostitution, and capricious lusts will overthrow society” (quoted in Meier and Geis 1997 , p. 28).

Most famous were the so-called Lock hospitals, which operated in Britain and its territories abroad from the mid-1700s until the twentieth century.

The book was translated into English in 1895 as The Female Offender . This first translation, however, omitted much of the information on prostitutes and “normal” women. The version used in this study was translated by Nicole Hahn Rafter and Mary Gibson ( Lombroso & Ferrero 2004 ).

This report can be found in the records of the Committee of Social Questions, Geneva, 27 April 1937, League of Nations archives, United Nations Office, Geneva (hereafter “LN archives”), CQS/A.10.

In 1921, the League of Nations replaced the racialized term “white slavery” with “traffic in women and children.”

Advocates of decriminalization are not in favor of the legalization of prostitution. Many radical feminists oppose legalization because it would normalize prostitution.

Usually 50 percent of the woman’s earnings went to the brothel owner or madam. Interestingly, this rate has remained more or less constant throughout space and time.

The issue of child prostitution in contemporary Asia, particularly Thailand and the Philippines, is an extremely complex one that goes beyond the scope of this essay. To understand this phenomenon, not only the age of the persons concerned should be discussed, but also the various definitions and societal attitudes toward childhood, sexuality, filial duty, and child labor in general.

French report, December 1924–January 1925, pp. 10–11, LN archives, Box S174.

Debate during the international colloquium “Reframing Prostitution: From Discourse to Description, from Moralisation to Normalisation?”, Ghent, University of Ghent, 27 March 2014.

Absi, P.   2013 . “ The Future of an Institution from the Past: Accommodating Regulationism in Bolivia, from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-First Century. ” Paper presented at the conference “Selling Sex in the City: Prostitution in World Cities, 1600 to the Present,” Amsterdam, 25–27 April.

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