South Africa could see a reduction in gender-based violence (GBV) if it follows through on draft legislation to decriminalize sex work.
Proposed changes to the current law, which would make it legal for adults to buy and sell sex, were announced in December. If signed into law, the bill would also exempt people who have previously been charged or imprisoned for misdemeanors. The period for public comment on the bill closes today.
Sex workers in South Africa face a lot of abuse. In 2019, 70% of female sex workers in a nationwide study said they had experienced violence in the past year, while nearly half had been raped by a client.
The move to make sex work legal could change that, research shows.
An analysis of 86 peer-reviewed studies found that the likelihood of sex workers experiencing physical or sexual violence, abuse or contracting a sexually transmitted infection (STI) is higher in places where sex work is considered a punishable offense rather than legal.
In addition, the benefits of decriminalizing sex work go beyond those in the industry. Research conducted in Rhode Island in the United States showed that rates of rape and STIs such as gonorrhea decreased – for everyone – as sex work became legal in the state.
Gonorrhea is often asymptomatic. It can be treated with antibiotics, but if left untreated, the infection can lead to infertility or serious inflammation. A mother with gonorrhea can pass it on to her baby during childbirth, which can damage his eyes.
We break down how the decriminalization of sex work has reduced GBV and STI cases in countries or cities where selling sex is legal – not only among workers but also among the general population.
Invisible and unlucky: How criminalization isolates sex workers
When it comes to illegal sex work (whether it’s buying or selling sex, or both), workers are often forced to do business in places where they can easily avoid the police. So, instead of working on a busy street or in a brothel, he would work in a darker, quieter street or in a bar. The police may not be able to see them in the place, but that means they are also invisible to colleagues and passers-by and are therefore more vulnerable to violence or theft by clients or criminals.
Sex workers have raised this concern in countries where sex work is banned – such as Serbia and Thailand – and in places like Vancouver, Canada where selling sex is legal but not buying.
For those who work on the street, the fear of the police also means there is no time to determine whether a client might be dangerous before getting into the car.
A sex worker in Canada explained the problem to researchers like this: “[Y]you can’t really see it [the client’s] faces, can’t see anything, they can have guns in their hands… they can be a bit drunk… And you can’t say ‘hi’ or anything before entering. You should hurry up before the police come.”
This rushed process also means that sex workers struggle to negotiate prices with clients before agreeing to the job. In Kenya, where sex work is illegal, workers told researchers that arguments over service fees (often after they had already had sex with clients) were a big reason for violence against them.
Disputes about clients refusing to wear condoms, or trying to break them, are another.
All of this is in stark contrast to the experiences of many sex workers in areas where it is legal to buy or sell sex.
In the US state of Nevada, where brothels can obtain a business license for legal sex work, prices are agreed and paid up front, and notices on the door state that condom use is mandatory.
There, sex workers’ rooms have intercoms and panic buttons and they can call colleagues and management who work in the same building.
Brothel staff can also call the police if a client becomes violent.
As a result, 39 out of 40 sex workers interviewed in 13 brothels said that they had never experienced violence at work and that most of them felt that their work was safe.
‘Sex workers slaughtered like chickens’
The reality of South African sex workers is very different. They cannot rely on the police for protection, because their work is illegal.
Sex workers in South Africa and three other countries where sex work is also illegal – Uganda, Kenya and Zimbabwe – told researchers they were reluctant to report abuse to the police, in many cases because they feared being jailed.
Many rapes and assaults therefore go unreported and the offenders are never brought to book.
In 2019, one in seven respondents in a survey of more than 3,000 female sex workers in all nine provinces said they had been raped by a police officer in the previous year. During the same 12-month period, approximately one in six sex workers interviewed had been physically assaulted by an officer.
In field research in 2021 that included people from Africa, the US and Russia, sex workers in Cape Town said that police carrying condoms was an offence, possibly confiscating them and putting workers at risk of sexually transmitted infections or, worse, take This is evidence that someone is a sex worker and therefore should be arrested.
Almost half of the sex workers interviewed in South Africa said they were afraid to bring condoms because they might be arrested.
Constance Mathe is the coordinator of Asijiki, a South African group that advocates for the decriminalization of sex work. They hope that making sex work legal will lead to a better working relationship with the police.
He said, “Sex workers are slaughtered like chickens. And nobody cares. If sex work is decriminalized, we can at least [go to the police and] open the case. Today, sex workers themselves are afraid to testify [against offenders] because they have no protection [from the police].”
Can sex workers and police be allies?
It doesn’t have to be that way, research shows.
In New Zealand, for example, sex work was decriminalized in 2003. Many workers there say they are now safer because officers regularly check on them and show them reports of violent people who pass the police station, which helps them identify potential dangers. client.
Because they no longer have to hide, sex workers who ply their services on the streets say they can do their work in safer, more crowded places and don’t have to haggle over the price of their services.
However, the researchers cautioned that New Zealand is a small island nation with strict border controls, so other countries may not be able to copy the approach exactly and achieve the same results.
How does legalizing sex work make everyone safer from sexual violence?
Legalizing sex work can be good for everyone. Evidence from the US and the Netherlands shows that sexual violence has declined in all cities and countries since sex work became legal.
In Rhode Island, for example, indoor sex work was legal between 2003 and 2009. Researchers found that reports of rape dropped by nearly a third compared to what the model expected if decriminalization had not occurred. (Indoor sex work means selling sex in a massage parlor or online but not on the street.)
Gonorrhea infections are also nearly halved in all countries (compared to what would have been expected if decriminalization had not happened).
Researchers believe the decline in gonorrhea cases is due to people being able to sell sex only from indoor venues. This moved the market away from street work and because sex workers then had more control over their environment, condom use was stricter, reducing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.
Second, when indoor sex work becomes legal, more people enter the business and those new recruits are less likely to be infected by the bug.
This means that the client is not infected, so it cannot spread to other partners later.
Figuring out how decriminalization has reduced rape cases in the country has become more difficult. Of course, better safety among sex workers leads to less rape among this group, but the decline in sexual violence is so dramatic that rape should also decline among other populations, the researchers said.
One theory is that when police are not forced to spend time chasing sex workers and pimps, they can focus more on policing other crimes such as sexual assault, reducing the rate of rape in Rhode Island.
While researchers don’t know exactly why policy changes caused a widespread drop in GBV cases, the “difference-in-difference” method was used in the analysis showing that the reason for the change continues.
Here’s how it works:
Researchers looked at how the number of rape cases in Rhode Island (the treatment group) compared to other states (the control group) over time. They see that the difference between the two is always the same.
So, let’s say there are 70 rapes in Rhode Island and, on average, 100 in the rest of the state, so the difference is 30. And let’s say this difference stays roughly the same every year.
However, after 2003, the difference between the number of rapes in Rhode Island and other states began to change. So, if before there were 30 fewer rapes in Rhode Island than anywhere else, there were, say, 50 fewer after the policy change.
This will tell the researchers that the change in policy – that is, decriminalizing the indoor type of work – is the reason for the drop in cases, because this is the only thing that has changed between the conditions in the treatment group and the control group.
A coincidence that followed bolstered US evidence.
Economists in the Netherlands published research with similar findings using the same analysis method – without knowing about the US researchers’ study.
Some Dutch cities have it tippelzones – designated streets where sex workers are allowed. City with tippelzones saw rape and sexual abuse cases dropped by 30% to 40% after the strip was opened – which in the ball park were the findings of the Rhode Island research.
But tippelzones do not have the same rules everywhere. In unregulated tippelzones, where sex workers do not need a license, sexual violence decreased for two years and then returned to previous levels. But where sex workers must have a license, like in Eindhoven or Heerlen, the rate of sexual violence has remained low for more than five years.
The main investigator of the Dutch study, Stephen Kastoryano, said that although it is not clear what caused the results, “obtaining the same results from two unrelated studies shows that making sex work legal can lead to fewer cases of sexual violence. “
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