Gender Policy Models and Calls to “Tackle Demand” for Sex Workers

Abstract

Why have proposals to “tackle demand” for sex workers by criminalizing their clients gained political traction in the UK? This article treats sex work policy debates as a site of contested norms concerning gender, sexuality, individual agency and the market. I argue that recent shifts away from a male breadwinner/female homemaker model of family life have disrupted established policy visions of desirable family and employment patterns. Calls to “tackle demand” for sex workers provide terrain to construct norms of gendered, sexual and market conduct which align with new policy visions of the dual earner family, nurturing fathers and employed mothers. Analysing recent policy documents, this article shows that governmental arguments in favour of “tackling demand” claim the policy will promote both women’s employment and gender equality in personal relationships. Furthermore, end demand discourse individualizes responsibility for continued gender inequality to the deviant sexual desires of a few bad men. The article concludes that end demand discourse deflects tensions inherent in policies which promote gender equality while reducing support for at-home mothers and thus exacerbating feminized poverty.