Health and Work in the Sex Industry

Abstract

This chapter continues with the theme of socially constructed notions of work and their restrictive impact on the scope of occupational health research and practice. The authors examine a particular form of invisible work: voluntary adult sex work in modern western societies. While this is not taken to represent all forms of sex work, it can be seen as an example of a form of unrecognised and unregulated work with attendant unaddressed health risks. The authors explore the extent to which the application of currently accepted definitions of work to this activity would highlight the problems faced by sex workers as well as identifying the day to day strategies that they, like other workers, employ to protect themselves from hazards. Redefining prostitution as ‘work’ may strengthen the case for the decriminalisation of prostitution and the extension of citizenship rights to sex workers, thus facilitating the development of more effective health promotion strategies. However, it would not necessarily fully reflect the complex nature of sex work and may even limit understanding of some of its dimensions. The authors highlight some of these dimensions which include power, patriarchy, exploitation and choice as well as changing forms of sexuality. These lie outside conventional discourses of work and risk but they are important to an understanding of the nature of work in the sex industry.