'Women are not seen as human beings' - Sex trade impacts gender equality, study finds

Aspects that participants were keen to dispel are that prostitution helps to lift women out of poverty or that sexual consent is something that can be bought. File picture

“Women – they are not seen as human beings, but more as a product. And the reality is that once you see something as an object as opposed to another human being, it takes away the humanity in women and presents them as that object that can paid for, that can be bought. There is no way a man will see an object as being equal to him, a man.”

That is the conclusion of one migrant support provider who took part in a roundtable discussion on prostitution organised as part a study by the National Women's Council and UCD's Sexual Exploitation Research Programme (SERP).

The study explores attitudes to the sexual exploitation of women and girls in the commercial sex trade in Ireland, and its impact on gender equality. Aspects that participants were keen to dispel are that prostitution helps to lift women out of poverty or that sexual consent is something that can be bought.

The study found that “entering the sex trade might provide a ‘temporary fix’ for women in dire financial circumstances by giving them access to cash quickly but say in the long term it is an unlikely escape route from poverty.” 

Participants admitted that “while the sex trade may provide a woman with money, it can take many things away from her at the same time – such as her physical and mental health, her relationships with family and friends and sometimes even how she values herself.” 

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A migrant rights advocate said: “I don’t think it really helps [women] get out of poverty.

“Instead, it pushes them into more poverty levels and at the same time leaves them with lifetime consequences as well, which are both physical and psychological.”

In terms of consent it found that the sex trade, including pornography, “actively promotes the view of women as products or assets and cements a sense of male entitlement to sexually access women’s bodies".

The act of purchasing sex was seen by some participants as using money to deny women their bodily autonomy.

A gender-based violence service provider said: “We are constantly talking about consent.

“We talk about it in terms of reproductive rights, in terms of bodily autonomy, in terms of choice, in terms of ‘you’re not allowed to touch me’, consent, consent, consent.

“And if you put money into the transaction, effectively you are trying to buy consent.

“And when you have somebody who’s in a precarious situation where they are economically desperate, or whether they’re under third-party control, or whatever those circumstances are, that is a really unequal power dynamic.”

The report states that there was a “firm agreement” amongst participants that prostitution is a form of gender-based violence due to the “power imbalance” that exists between the buyer and the seller.

Several participants highlighted the fact that the number and nature of acts involved in prostitution are “traumatic” and cause “harm to their physical, sexual and psychological health". Others noted that “desperate circumstances such as poverty drive women to take risks they never normally would, within a trade that is rife with violence.” 

A minority ethnic support service provider who took part said: “I think a lot of time the easy thing for society or government or education to do is to concentrate on telling young girls or women how to be safe.

But they miss the bit about working with males around what healthy relationships look like. That is the bit that never happens. It almost always is teach the women to be safe rather than teach the men to not be a danger. 

The Roundtables lasted over two hours and were recorded over Zoom for the purposes of transcription.

The sex trade is heavily gendered, and migrant women make up an average of 84% of women in prostitution across 13 European countries. In Ireland, the profile of women in the sex trade, estimated to be 1,000 women at any one time, is of young, vulnerable migrants from the Global South and impoverished regions of Central and Eastern Europe.