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Economics and Development

Economics and Development

Although it is well accepted that sex work and poverty, stigma and inequality are linked, too often simplistic assumptions about these factors lead to ineffective, and even harmful, programmes and policies. PLRI aims to establish broader understandings of the economics of sex work and relate them to the challenges of optimising the benefits of economic programs and policies on development, human rights and public health outcomes. We are also committed to helping establish broader understandings of the economics of the sex sector, the demand for, and supply of, commercial sex; the factors that determine prices and behaviours within sex industries, the economic re-distributional effects of commercial sex and the impact of economic trends on people that buy, sell or trade sexual services. To achieve this PLRI research will analyse sex work economies as they relate to social protection, livelihoods strengthening and equitable development policy and programming.

Resources

  • Trafficking in Human Beings. Ten Years of Independent Monitoring by The Dutch Rapporteur on Trafficking in Human Beings - 2013

    The report ‘Trafficking in Human Beings, Ten years of independent monitoring’ marked the tenth anniversary of the establishment of the post of National Rapporteur as an independent monitoring mechanism of the Netherlands’ efforts to combat human trafficking. It also marked ten years of making recommendations, 200 in all. Many of those recommendations have been acted upon, the importance of some has receded and others have been regularly repeated.

  • Banking Services for Sex Workers - 2012

    There are a number of people who earn their living directly or indirectly through commercial sex work. Exploitation, vulnerability, forced labour; servitude, stigmatization characterizes Commercial Sex Workers (CSW). A sense of immorality, criminality, and informality associated with their work keeps them excluded from mainstream society.

  • MARKET MORALITIES IN THE FIELD OF COMMERCIAL SEX - 2012

    The website ‘Punternet’ contains customer service reviews (‘field reports’) of commercial sex encounters in the UK's indoor sex market. Treating Punternet as a calculative device shows how ordinary understandings of morality underpin consumer markets, as field reports qualify commercial sex to produce understandings of ‘good value’.

  • MARKET MORALITIES IN THE FIELD OF COMMERCIAL SEX - 2012

    The website ‘Punternet’ contains customer service reviews (‘field reports’) of commercial sex encounters in the UK's indoor sex market. Treating Punternet as a calculative device shows how ordinary understandings of morality underpin consumer markets, as field reports qualify commercial sex to produce understandings of ‘good value’.

  • Old Age Financial Security in the Informal Sector: Sex Work in India - 2012

    We assess old age financial security in a sample of sex workers in India. Our analysis, based on primary data for 240 former sex workers and 340 current sex workers in the states of Karnataka and Maharashtra, highlights three features of their economic situation. First, former sex workers economically outperform female-headed households in the general population.

  • Piloting a Savings-Led Microfinance Intervention with Women Engaging - 2012

     This paper describes a pilot study testing the feasibility of an innovative savings-led microfinance intervention in increasing the economic empowerment and reducing the sexual risk behavior of women engaging in sex work in Mongolia.

  • Risk-Coping through Sexual Networks - 2012

    Why do women engage in transactional sex? While much of the explanation is that sex-for-money pays more than other jobs, we use a unique panel data set constructed from 192 self-reported diaries of sex workers in Western Kenya to show that women who supply transactional sex develop relationships with regular clients, and that these clients send transfers in response to negative income shocks.

  • Security, Equality, and the Clash of Ideas: Sweden's Evolving Anti-Trafficking Policy - 2012
    An article in Human Rights Review.
     
    Seeking to explain the emergence of anti-trafficking initiatives, scholars have explored two sets of ideas—national security and gender equality—thought to shape policy. In this study, we examine whether such ideational influence accounts for Sweden's evolving anti-trafficking policy over the past decade.
  • The Impact of Abuse History and Trauma Symptoms on Successful Completion of a Prostitution-exiting Program - 2012

    This study examines the trauma symptoms and life experiences of 49 women in a residential prostitution-exiting program and identifies differences among women who complete 90 days of the program and women who drop out of the program prior to completing 90 days. The majority of the women reported childhood abuse, adult abusive relationships, and victimization. Women who completed 90 days of treatment were found to be older than the non-completers.

  • Transactional Sex as a Response to Risk in Western Kenya - 2011

    Though formal and informal sex work has long been identified as crucial for the spread of HIV/AIDS, the nature of the sex-for-money market remains poorly understood. Using a unique panel dataset constructed from 192 self-reported diaries, we find that women who engage in transactional sex substantially increase their supply of risky, better compensated sex to cope with unexpected health shocks, particularly the illness of another household member.

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