Only crime gangs benefit from rebranding prostitution as 'sex work'
Over 90% of those who work in prostitution in Ireland are migrant women — most are young, vulnerable and have ended up in the sex trade due to poverty, coercion or some combination of these push factors.
Imagine a job which requires you to submit to multiple experiences of unwanted, undesired sex with numerous men every day? Where a beating or a rape at the hands of a violent "customer" are common occupational hazards? Where your customers regularly remove the condom you carefully positioned without your consent during a sex act, and you immediately fear an unwanted pregnancy or STI.
Imagine a job where you must insert a sponge into your vagina once a month, because your ‘manager’ insists you continue to sexually service clients even while you are menstruating.
Women in the Irish sex trade don’t have to imagine such events, because these are the daily realities of their lives, realities which they share with us in our research. This experience cannot be classified as sex work. It is sexual exploitation.
Every day across the island of Ireland, 900+ women in prostitution are advertised online to sex buyers. Less than 1% of those advertised are men. The vast majority, over 90%, are migrant women — most are young, vulnerable and have ended up in the sex trade due to poverty, coercion or some combination of these push factors.
Crime gangs, both domestic and international, are heavily involved in the control and organisation of the sex trade in Ireland, arranging the movement of women across the country to meet the demands of sex buyers in all locations.
Based on the evidence, the Sexual Exploitation Research and Policy [Serp] Institute has gathered over the last decade, we have established that about 10-15% of women in prostitution in Ireland fit the classic definition of trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation recognised in law, while about 5-10% describe having entered prostitution by choice, in circumstances where they had other choices available to them.
However, the majority of about 80% fall into a much larger vulnerable category — these are primarily migrant women, new to Ireland and often with limited English, who have been drawn into prostitution by the urgent need to support loved ones in their country of origin.
Some of these vulnerable women describe the choice they made to enter prostitution, but invariably these choices were made in extremely constrained circumstances where few other options for survival were available.
Desperate people often take desperate measures to survive — almost daily people choose to board small, unseaworthy vessels in the Mediterranean, running from danger or poverty, but, as in prostitution, just because they make the choice to do so, doesn’t make this situation right.
Those who describe themselves as sex workers are a small minority in the Irish sex trade, albeit a vocal one. Their claims they represent the voices of all those in prostitution are a misrepresentation.
In fact, the large majority of women in prostitution in Ireland do not identify as sex workers — our interviewees consistently reveal that prostitution is not their identity — it is not who they are, rather it is something they must do to obtain the basic necessities in life for themselves and those they care for.
The vast majority of transactions in the sex trade are therefore characterised by an imbalance of power between the buyer and seller. The buyer is using his superior social status and economic power to purchase sexual access to the body of a woman who does not enjoy such status and is typically badly in need of the money.
What our many research participants disclose could not be clearer — the sex of prostitution is unwanted, women in prostitution have no desire to have sex with multiple unknown men daily, but they submit themselves to this because they are coerced to do so, or because they so desperately need the money. This is not consensual sex, it is sexual exploitation.
True sexual consent is typically defined as consent "freely given in a relationship of equal power" — conditions that cannot be met in the context of prostitution.
This reality is reflected in sex buyers’ own narratives. One of the most common complaints among the many sex buyers who take the time to write online reviews of the women they paid to sexually access, is that she was "mechanical", "robotic", or "out of it".
What they fail to recognise, or perhaps conveniently ignore, is that these women are potentially dissociating — a common response to trauma, especially when a person has been sexually violated. Instead, buyers complain that women behaving this way have provided a poor service and advise their fellow buyers that they are "not worth the money".
Perhaps unsurprisingly, those who promote the view that sex work is work are very quiet on the details of what women must actually do in prostitution, how the buyers treat them, and the profound physical, sexual, reproductive and psychological health harms they face in the process, because the truth simply does not support the narrative that this is a job like any other.
Over time, "sex work" has crept into common parlance, with many well-meaning people believing this is the most respectful terminology to use in referring to all those who sell sex.
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This framing is also a boon for pimps and traffickers, who want to legitimise and legalise every aspect of the sex trade. They are more than delighted to be described as managers rather than criminals, and for their extreme acts of exploitation to be portrayed as legitimate business transactions.
Finally, it is a very effective recruitment (grooming) tool — encouraging vulnerable girls the world over to believe that sex work will be a lucrative, even glamorous, career option for them.
As a country, we have already rejected the concept of prostitution as work, outlawing the purchase of sex in 2017 and officially recognising prostitution and sex trafficking as forms of gender-based violence in the Government’s Zero Tolerance Strategy since 2022.
Now perhaps it is time to take the next step and stop using the problematic terminology of "sex work" — acknowledging many sex trade survivors find it deeply offensive, that the majority currently selling sex do not describe themselves as such, and the ultimate beneficiaries of the idea that prostitution is "work" are the organised crime gangs, who reap millions in profit every year by sexually exploiting some of the most marginalised, vulnerable women and girls in our society.
- Ruth Breslin is director of The Sexual Exploitation Research and Policy Institute
