Sex Work Labour And Empowerment

This book presents an analysis of the concepts of female empowerment and resilience against violence in the informal entertainment and sex industries. Generally, the key debates on sex work have centred on arguments proposed by the oppressive and empowerment paradigms. This book moves away from such debates to look widely at the micro issues such as the role of income in the lives of sex workers, the significance of peer organisations and networks of women, and how resilience is enacted and empowerment experienced. It also uses positive deviancy theory as a useful strategy to bring about notable changes in terms of empowerment and agency for women working in this sector and also for addressing the wider issues of migration, HIV/AIDS, and violence against women and girls. The focus is on moving beyond a victimisation framework without downplaying the extent of the violence that women in this industry experience. It conceptualises the theories of empowerment and power which have not been tested against women who work in this sector, combined with in-depth interviews with women working in the industry as well as academics, activists, and personnel in the NGO and donor sector. In doing so, it informs the reader of the numerous social, political, and economic factors that structure and sustain the global growth of the industry and analyses the diverse factors that lead many thousands of women and girls around the world to work in this sector. The work presents an important contribution to the study of citizenship and rights from a non-Western angle and will be of interest to academics, researchers, and policymakers across human rights, sociology, economics, and development studies.

Body/Sex/Work focuses on the intimate, embodied and sexualised labour that occurs within body work and sex work. Bringing together an internationally renowned group of academics, it explores, empirically and theoretically, labour processes, workplace relations, regulation and resistance in some of the many work sites that make up the body work and sex work sectors. The book makes a key contribution to research recognising the embodiment of labour and the body, reframing the key questions in critical studies of work and employment. Key Benefits: - The first book that draws together the sub-disciplines of body work and sex work - Written by leading international experts - Contains cutting edge empirical research on contemporary topics Body/Sex/Work is an ideal companion for upper level undergraduate and postgraduate students of labour and organisation studies, body studies, gender, and sexuality. It will also appeal to researchers and lecturers in these fields.

Sex work has always attracted policy, public and prurient interest. Currently, legal frameworks in developed countries range from prohibition, through partial legalisation to active regulation. Globalisation has increased women’s mobility between developing and developed countries at the same time as women’s employment opportunities in the developed world are shifting. Family and intimate relationships are being transformed by changing demographics, shifting social mores and new intersections between intimate lives and global markets. Sex work is located at the nexus of new intimacies, shifting employment patterns and changing global mobilities. This volume examines the working lives of contemporary sex workers; their practices, their labour market conditions and their engagement with domestic and international regulatory frameworks. It locates the voices and experiences of workers in Melbourne, Australia, at the centre of the sexual services industry as they reflect on brothels and independent escort work, on working conditions and managers, and on the relationships they form with clients. It offers a new account of sex work where women’s labour and mobility is understood as central in local and global imperatives to offer sexual services. It examines how these new imperatives intersect with, challenge and exceed existing regulatory frameworks for sex work. Sex work: labour, mobility and sexual services draws together the everyday practices of sex workers and the broader global markets in which workers negotiate employment. In bringing together these two important intersecting areas, it offers a grounded and innovative account of sex work which will be of interest to academics and policy makers concerned with sex work, gender studies and the sociology of labour.

In 2013, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in Canada v. Bedford that key prostitution laws were unconstitutional. Red Light Labour addresses the new legal regime regulating sex work by analyzing how laws and those who uphold them have constructed, controlled, and criminalized sex workers, their clients, and their workspaces. This groundbreaking collection also offers nuanced interpretations of commercial sexual labour from the perspectives of workers, activists, and researchers. The contributors highlight the struggle for civic and social inclusion by considering sex workers’ advocacy tactics, successes, and challenges. A timely legal, policy, and social analysis of sex work in Canada.

Prior research has tended to mirror popular representations of the female sex worker as a morally flawed individual and a victim of circumstances beyond her control. Sex Work and Female Self-Empowerment presents a fresh perspective on "the world’s oldest profession" by considering the relationship between sex work and female self-empowerment from a variety of disciplinary and practical perspectives and presenting new data derived from the author’s study of six self-employed indoor female sex workers (IFSWs). Informed by the author’s training in clinical psychology and human sexuality studies and her more than fifteen years of involvement in the sex work profession, this book extends beyond social stereotyping and stigmatization and presents a more balanced view of the identities and aspirations of sex workers in contemporary society.

Presents essays by feminists of theory and literature that examine contemporary feminism and the most pressing issues of today.

How the law harms sex workers—and what they want instead Do you have to endorse prostitution in order to support sex worker rights? Should clients be criminalized, and can the police deliver justice? In Revolting Prostitutes, sex workers Juno Mac and Molly Smith bring a fresh perspective to questions that have long been contentious. Speaking from a growing global sex worker rights movement, and situating their argument firmly within wider questions of migration, work, feminism, and resistance to white supremacy, they make it clear that anyone committed to working towards justice and freedom should be in support of the sex worker rights movement.

"Despite being dubbed "the world's oldest profession," prostitution has rarely been viewed as a legitimate form of labour. Instead, it has been criminalized, sensationalized, and polemicized across the socio-political spectrum by everyone from politicians to journalists to women's groups. Interest in and concern over sex work is not grounded in the lived realities of those who work in the industry, but rather in inflammatory ideas about who is participating, how they wound up in this line of work, and what form it takes. In Selling Sex, Emily van der Meulen, Elya M. Durisin, and Victoria Love present a more nuanced, balanced, and realistic view of the sex industry. They bring together a vast collection of voices - including researchers, feminists, academics, and advocates, as well as sex workers of differing ages, genders, and sectors - to engage in a dialogue that challenges the dominant narratives surrounding the sex industry and advances the idea that sex work is in fact work. Presenting a variety of opinions and perspectives on such diverse topics as the social stigma of sex work, police violence, labour organizing, anti-prostitution feminism, human trafficking, and harm reduction, Selling Sex is an eye-opening, challenging, and necessary book."--Publisher's website.